Here’s why the International League T20 tournament's stats won’t be included in players’ t20 records

International League T20: (Image Source: Twitter)

The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has become the latest country to launch its own domestic T20 tournament with the start of the International League T20, which kicked off in Dubai on Friday, January 13, 2023. The lineup of players taking part reads like the who’s who of international cricket, with some of the biggest names in the sport taking to the field in the six-team tournament.

The tournament will see 34 games held across three venues in UAE, namely Dubai, Sharjah, and Abu Dhabi. Notably, three out of the six teams are owned by Indian T20 League franchises, one owned by the Glazer family, who also own Manchester United; one by Adani Sportsline, and one based in Sharjah owned by Capri Global Capital Media.

Although it is in direct competition with other high-profile T20 leagues that are currently in progress across the world, the ILT20 has managed to attract extremely well-known names. T20 stalwarts like Moeen Ali, Rovman Powell, Dwayne Bravo, Sunil Narine, Colin Munro, Andre Russell, Kieron Pollard, Nicholas Pooran, Imran Tahir, Shimron Hetmeyer, and James Vince, to name a few, will be involved in the tournament.

Even India will represent at the tournament in the form of ex-internationals Robin Uthappa and Yusuf Pathan. In an effort to attract more spectators, the league allows a team to have as many as nine overseas players in a playing eleven. 

However, despite the notable names taking part in it and the Governing Cricket Council (ICC) sanctioning the league, matches in the ILT20 will not have List-A T20 status. This means that the runs scored and the wickets taken by the players in the tournament will not count as official T20 games for the purposes of record-keeping.

The reason for this is that the tournament is not being hosted by a full-member nation of the International Governing Council. As such, this tournament will ultimately be focused more on entertainment, prize money, a winner’s trophy, bragging rights, and of course, enhancing individual players’ prowess as a T20 player that will make the cricketing world take notice.

Earlier, the Global T20 Canada also was not granted List-A T20 status despite having international players like Yuvraj Singh, Chris Gayle, and Steve Smith featuring in the tournament.