Corey Anderson, Future Cricket Ambassador?

The injured captain of the Unicorns has a future outside the game if he wants it - and it doesn't have to wait until he's done playing.

Two years ago, he was a powerful ball-striking middle-order allrounder who put stress on opposing teams late in an innings. One year ago, he was an effective middle-order bat who could bowl in a pinch. Now, Corey Anderson is… done for the season.

The San Francisco Unicorns, the relentless wellspring of joy, charm, fun, and sixes hit high and far enough to threaten the International Space Station, ruled their captain out for the remainder of the 2025 MLC season with a torn oblique (which is painful to say, let alone recover from). The news came hours before the Unicorns’ game against the Texas Super Kings in Grand Prairie last Friday, a game they won under deputized captain Matt Short, who has continued San Francisco’s unbeaten form since taking the reins, most recently surviving a close call against Seattle. The Unicorns posted a tribute video on social media wishing the Kiwi-turned-Texan well. It was sweet in a way that is rare in sports - usually landing like the bizarre Eloy Jimenez tribute by the White Sox a few years back - and it fits their culture, but it’s also not something sports teams typically do unless they think this might be the end.

Anderson will turn 35 in December. He had a really difficult time making solid contact with the ball and had no shot of bowling reliably before he got hurt. It stings to bring that up, because Anderson is clearly an instrumental piece of a culture that is rare in franchise cricket, one that actually feels like a team that sticks together when the season is over. He has nothing left to prove in the sport: he played 13 Tests for New Zealand and posted adequate figures, set the record for fastest ODI century (which is now the second-fastest), and has played in the T20 World Cup for two different countries. He already left the game once, in 2020, to move to Dallas with his wife and young family.

He left the game on his terms, returned on his terms, and now that injury has derailed the latter stage of his career, he has the chance to be a major factor in American cricket on his terms. He doesn’t even have to move halfway around the world this time.

As a cricketing country, the United States’ talent pool is modest and growing, but the cricket advocacy and commentary circuit is downright barren. Quick, name a US-based writer other than me or Peter Della Penna… and I started doing this like two weeks ago as a hobby.

Most cricket commentary is done by touring imports from abroad like Danny Morrison (New Zealand), Pommie Mbangwa (Zimbabwe), Andrew Leonard (Ireland), Lisa Sthalekar (Australia), and Nikhil Uttamchandani (Barbados via Canada). While they do a fine job, and Leonard in particular is great at leveraging his encyclopedic knowledge of associate cricket, I can tell they haven’t lived America or American cricket. When MLC is over, they go on to the next stop and talk about Scotland and Namibia or the CPL or whatever else. Anderson has lived US cricket via the national team and franchise leagues and is based in the United States; he knows how to communicate with Americans on a daily basis because he has no choice, and that makes him a perfect bridge between a neophyte audience and a sport with some… esoteric terminology.

And why wait? Anderson isn’t going anywhere and the Unicorns don’t play every night, so there are opportunities to weave him into the booth right away. After Mark Wood’s foray into the press box with Sky Sports for the first India-England test at Leeds, it’s hard to suggest Anderson isn’t ready or qualified. Not that Wood wasn’t entertaining, but he was definitely a little rough around the edges. All the more reason to get Anderson in there early.

He doesn’t have to be the only one. Aaman Patel is a young play-by-play man getting vital reps in the booth and providing a distinctive voice. Unmukt Chand has a bright future as an analyst, being completely unafraid to speak his mind and with roots on the West Coast. Aaman is still honing his style and Unmukt has a few more years of cricket in him. Anderson is more or less ready now, fully armed with knowledge of the game, quick wit, and a clear understanding of how to communicate the game to an American audience without resorting to cringey, somehow-already-worn-out baseball metaphors. That sort of natural fit for a role like this is rare.

That doesn’t mean Anderson wants it, of course. I have never met the man, so I hardly have insight into what he wants to do when his playing days are done. These sorts of injuries are the ones that make older players think, though, and Anderson has a chance to be prominent in the game he loves in a way that is unique to who he is and where he lives. Someone will eventually be the first one, and few are so readily equipped to break through that barrier and lay the foundation for the American cricket commentariat that is necessary to elevating the game in our culture.

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Thank you so much for reading Stumps & Stripes! If you’re enjoying my work and haven’t already subscribed, a free email subscription goes a long way for me and ensures you’ll get everything I write. If you’d like to read more of my work, check out my latest MLC power rankings from earlier this week.

I have had to shuffle some pieces around because I’ve been hit with flashes of mad inspiration and the best of intentions seemingly every time I turn on a game, but I’ll have more on the Unicorns next week, and I’m aiming to write about each team at least once before the season ends. Stay tuned!