TWO IRISH FRANCHISES — the Dublin Chiefs and Belfast Titans — will compete in a new Twenty20 tournament later this summer, in a further boost to Ireland’s hopes of becoming competitive in the shortest format of the game.
The inaugural Euro T20 Slam, which will involve six city-based teams from Ireland, Scotland and Netherlands, was launched in Dublin’s Westin Hotel on Tuesday.
Ireland will be represented by the Dublin Chiefs and Belfast Titans, with the Amsterdam Kings, Rotterdam Rhinos, Glasgow Giants and Edinburgh Rocks the other franchises confirmed for the 2019 edition.
The tournament will be played in four fixture blocks, with all six teams playing in Amsterdam between 30 August and 5 September, in Edinburgh between 6-12 September and Malahide between 13-19 September.
The venue for the knockout phase has yet to be confirmed.
While a number of overseas stars have already been announced, the teams will be predominately made up of home-grown players, with each governing body from Ireland, Scotland and Netherlands to submit 18 players for auction on 30 June.
Among those already confirmed for the player draft are Australia’s Shane Watson, Brendon McCullum of New Zealand, Afghanistan leg-spinner Rashid Khan and Kiwi batsman Luke Ronchi. More are due to be announced in the next month.
“We are very excited that nearly 20 months of planning has brought us to this day,” Cricket Ireland CEO, Warren Deutrom, said.
“Speaking from an Irish perspective, one of the prime motivators for the Slam is to provide greater opportunities for Irish players to play top quality T20 cricket.
The opportunity for all of our players — as well as coaches and officials — to operate alongside some of the best in the world will only benefit both our established and emerging talent for at least the next decade.
“Our colleagues at Scotland and Netherlands view this the event the same — and collectively we view the event as an opportunity to help properly popularise the game of cricket in our three nations through the vehicle of T20 franchise cricket.”
After a slide down the Twenty20 world rankings in recent years, Ireland will hope to use the new tournament to develop players in the shortest format, while gaining valuable exposure to regular top-level games.
The tournament, which will see 33 games played over a three-week period, gets underway on 30 August.
Subscribe to our new podcast, The42 Rugby Weekly, here:
