Last summer, after the MLC season ended, I said San Francisco needed a frontline spinner. The news we got Saturday was not quite what I had in mind, but it does check that box… and then some.
The Unicorns signed Ravichandran Ashwin on Saturday.
I kinda want to let that sentence sit on its own, because it’s an extremely important moment for the league. Ashwin is the first former Indian national team player to suit up in MLC, and he could have a massive impact on cricket in the United States even at 39 and long after his prime cricketing days have gone.
It makes sense that San Francisco made this move. Co-owner Venky Harinaryan is on the record saying MLC could use Indian stars to accelerate its growth, so his team went out and got one. He name-checked Virat Kohli for that effort in an interview with Times of India last summer, but Ashwin was available and willing. I have written before about the need for MLC to have a “David Beckham moment,” where a late-prime star who still has some on-field juice arrives in MLC and brings the league to the attention of people who are curious about the person rather than the game, hoping that some of them will stick around when he leaves. While my focus was on Kohli or Rohit Sharma, one of the greatest test spinners ever could do the job just as well. He has already generated considerable buzz and will be a draw at the gate, particularly in the Indian diaspora that will pack the house to watch one of their homeland’s legends. He will be a reason for whatever the modern equivalent of water cooler talk is that accidentally exposes people to cricket. When they want to see what the fuss is about, they turn the TV on and see bigger crowds in Oakland than the A’s had in their final few years (not a high bar), and the cult popularity of this sport starts to come to life. This will tell us just how big the sleeping giant of American cricket support really is.
Perhaps his most important attribute, though, is the fact that he is a capital-T Talker. He’s always willing to speak his mind, and the Indian press enthusiastically amplify the things he says. Sometimes he’s right, sometimes he’s just an ass, but he is always honest about how he feels and what he sees. If he comes to MLC and has a good experience, he will be very clear and very loud about that experience. It will catch the attention of players who may look to follow that path in the future. His blessing, if earned, would lend the league a considerable boost in credibility with its skeptics that long outlasts Ashwin’s actual playing time in the US. It can sell tickets and merch, but it can also convince people that maybe cricket stadiums aren’t going to be white elephants in places with big South Asian communities.
For all of this to work, though, Ashwin has to show up and play. He was supposed to play for the Sydney Thunder in the Big Bash League during the Australian summer but bowed out to recover from knee surgery. If he only plays once or twice, the hype from his signing fizzles, but if he plays even six or seven of the Unicorns’ 10 regular season games, that’s enough to deliver the goods. There is risk for both Ashwin and the Unicorns of being branded as cynical or out for the money if it goes south on the field, but that would have so little impact on MLC’s status quo that the rewards drastically outweigh that risk on San Francisco’s end.
Independent of his star power, Ashwin has a chance to actually fill a roster hole. Hassan Khan is a very good allrounder, but the Unicorns have been hard-up for reliable spin bowling otherwise and have run into situations where extra high-level spin would come in handy. Their loss to Washington in Grand Prairie last year was crying out for more spin to take advantage of the conditions, and if they somehow won that game, they might not have crumpled in the second half of the season. While Ashwin is not who he was three or four years ago, it’s a good-faith effort to give the roster some extra stopping power. It gives a big boost to the Unicorns’ overseas contingent, which includes Matt Short back as captain along with Finn Allen, Xavier Bartlett, Cooper Connolly, Aaron Hardie, Victoria teenager Ollie Peake, and Ashwin’s favorite Pakistani fast bowler, Haris Rauf. That could get interesting.
This is not about 2026, though. It’s about building a roadmap for MLC’s future - something the league needs now more than ever.
THE THREE AMIGOS RIDE AGAIN
In 2025, the Washington Freedom elected to do something most teams did not do: they retained a player they knew was unlikely to take part in the 2025 season. Now Marco Jansen is back, and Washington is much better off for it.
Jansen’s return for 2026 was confirmed by the team on Saturday along with New Zealand fireballer Lockie Ferguson, who played a limited but ferocious role in the Freedom’s run to the Grand Final last year with three wickets at a 3.87 economy in his eight overs late in the campaign. The news reunites Ferguson, Jansen, and Saurabh Netravalkar, the Three Amigos of Washington’s 2024 title-winning pace attack.
While a great deal of attention was rightfully paid to the devastating batting pair of Steve Smith and Travis Head for the havoc they wreaked, the Freedom’s pace trio took 36 wickets at an economy of 7.90, an average of 18.14, and a strike rate of 13.78. The big winner here is Netravalkar, who teams could afford to work around when his partners in the power play were Jack Edwards and Mitchell Owen. Those are good players - Owen was the runaway MVP of the league in 2025 and a breakout performer with the ball - but Ferguson is consistently in the low 90s and Jansen can hit 90mph, which is a cut above the Australian allrounders, and their perceived threat means teams have to take more risks against Netravalkar. If healthy, they put Washington right back at the sharp end of the field in 2026.
Owen is also back, announced shortly before this was published, and he’ll be able to focus more on his dynamite bat and can settle in as a fourth option in the pace unit. The Think Tank will be spoiled for choice in 2026. Glenn Maxwell is back, too… I’ll have more on that one later.
KLAAS DISMISSED
What was your favorite moment of the Heinrich Klaasen era in Seattle? The best one could end up being the end of it. That was made official this weekend when the South African’s departure was confirmed by the club on Saturday citing “family reasons.” In reality, though, it would be really awkward to have him back after being stripped of the captaincy mid-season last year.
The Orcas went 1-11 under Klaasen’s leadership, the worst record for any MLC captain since the league began play. The baton was passed to Sikandar Raza after an 0-5 start in 2025 with measurable improvement: the Orcas promptly rattled off three straight wins under Raza thanks to an explosive run of form from Shimron Hetmyer and seemed reinvigorated, at least for a time. Klaasen never really picked things back up with the bat after the switch, finishing with a high score of 48 in a game where the Orcas were bowled out for 82 by Washington at Lauderhill. In the two years after MLC gained List A status from the ICC, he averaged 15.93 with the bat and had just one half-century in 16 innings.
It’s hard to imagine him leaving if he were averaging 35 instead of 15, but whatever the mechanism or process, the result is a healthy one for the league: a player who was not producing in MLC will not play in MLC. There is now enough of a sample size that we can confidently evaluate which internationals fit in MLC and which don’t, and teams have to operate accordingly. Too many teams have been willing to hang onto under-performing stars because of name recognition or what they’ve done in the past, but that’s not how franchises build a winner in the short-term or the long-term. Seattle, like San Francisco, is a team committed to the long-term future of the game in the US, but unlike San Francisco, they haven’t been winning. Klaasen was not contributing to winning cricket, and his departure opens up resources to find guys who will.
As far as the captaincy in 2026, it’s unclear if Raza will take up the mantle again. Zimbabwe is scheduled to host a multi-format tour by Bangladesh tentatively slated for the beginning of July, potentially compromising Raza’s availability for the second half of the season. Seattle doesn’t have an abundance of options for the captaincy with experience, so they could opt to go with a veteran domestic player like Jessy Singh, Harmeet Singh, or Shayan Jahangir, or they could sign a big name who aligns with Voges’ vision for Seattle’s future.
Whatever they do, the international personnel window is clearly open for MLC, and announcements will roll in steadily over the next few days and weeks. The Houston Open is just over two weeks away, and club teams in some parts of the country are already out and playing.
Cricket is back, and so is the pollen. Praise the Lord and pass the Benadryl.