As Europe's remarkably venerable club competitions heat up in a sweltering continental end-season, the traditional flow of the European cricketing summer will be disturbed this year by the advent of not one but two new competitions; both international in scope, both drawing inspiration from football's Champions League, and both aspiring to be the headline competition of the European cricket calendar, albeit with very different visions of how to get there. The new Euro T20 Slam, the latest in a flurry of new franchise T20 leagues springing up across the Associate World, will bring global talent and attention to Europe when it kicks off in Amsterdam at the end of August. But today, in a few select municipalities at least, the focus will be on La Manga in Southern Spain, where the inaugural European Cricket League, a nascent continental club championship featuring domestic champions from six continental European countries, gets underway.
Champions Leagues - contrasting visions for European cricket's future
Of the two the most high profile is without doubt the ET20 Slam, which held it's player draft in London two weeks ago. The first such league hosted across multiple ICC members, the Slam is a collaborative undertaking between Cricket Ireland, Cricket Scotland, the KNCB (Cricket Netherlands) and their commercial partners Woods Entertainment and GS Holding - the parent company of the Mercuri Group, the principal backers of the Global T20, a similar initiative in Canada the second edition of which is currently being contested in Brampton, just outside of Toronto.
The Slam is a somewhat more ambitious affair than its Canadian sister league, Mercuri apparently unfazed by substantial losses from the first edition of the GT20 and committing to a somewhat more expansive competition in Europe, hosted across three countries with six city-based sides representing Dublin, Belfast, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Edinburgh and Glasgow facing off in a double round-robin league phase leading into semi finals, the 33 matches split across three rounds, with Amsterdam's VRA ground hosting the first 10 matches from August 30th, before the entire competition decamps to the Grange at Edinburgh for the next round starting September 6th, and then on to Malahide, Dublin for the final round and finals. The "travelling circus" model will presumably keep costs down to a degree, and is an improvement on the GT20's single-venue schedule, though three of the six "franchises" - Glasgow Giants, Rotterdam Rhinos and Belfast Titans - will effectively have no home matches in the first edition.
No such expense has been spared on the rosters, however, with an
