Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen are among more than a dozen mostly Indian-American business leaders who are more investing than $120 million to bring T20 cricket to America in the US version of the IPL.

FREMONT, CA: More than a dozen largely Indian-American business executives, including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, are committing more than USD 120 million to bring T20 cricket to America in the US edition of the IPL. The funding will be used to develop premier cricket-specific stadia and training centers in eight US cities, including New York, Washington DC, Seattle, San Jose, and Houston, to kick off a world-class six-team T20 league, possibly as early as 2023, according to Major League Cricket (MLC), the first professional T20 cricket league, in what is easily the world's largest sports market revenue-wise.

MLC claims to have completed an initial closing of a USD 44 million Series A and A1 Fundraising Round headed by Satya Nadella and others and promised USD 76 million in additional fundraising over the next 12 months. For the Series A and A1 Fundraising Round, which comprises MLC's seed investment round, it cited the following corporate leaders among investor groups: Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) and Soma Somasegar (Managing Director, Madrona Venture Group); Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan (Founders of Milliways Ventures and Rocketship VC); Sanjay Govil (Founder and Chairman of Infinite Computer Solutions and CEO of Zyter); Anurag Jain (Managing Partner of Perot Jain, LP, Chairman of Access Healthcare).

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is a noted cricket fan in a city with a vibrant local league and a cricket history dating back to colonial America. He is already a part-owner of the Seattle Sounders franchise in Major League Soccer. In the United States, cricket predates baseball. Games in Georgia in 1737 and Baltimore in 1754, the same year Benjamin Franklin sent a printed copy of cricket rules of play home to the Colonies, almost a century before the first book of baseball rules was produced, are historic allusions to cricket in the United States.