MLC Power Rankings - Week 3
A new #1 emerges as the regular season shifts to Florida for the final leg.
It’s amazing how long this season can feel when you’re in it. A month of cricket - constant, colorful, dramatic, and sometimes really, really dumb cricket - leaves so many thought spinning in my head. Stuff about the season, stuff about the big picture of US cricket and how MLC fits in. Is it working? Is it failing? Can it do both at the same time? Do you think they’ll deliver the tandoori chicken kebabs from the Grand Prairie concession stands to Tennessee if I ask really nicely? It’s just so much, and it’s hard to keep track of it all.
Now we’re onto Florida, the final leg of the regular season with the potential to throw yet another curveball with a high likelihood one or more games will be impacted by one of the peninsula’s ever-present pop-up showers. Remember, four games were supposed to be played here during the T20 World Cup last summer, but three of them were abandoned because there was more rain than the grounds crew was prepared for, and they couldn’t get the outfield playable.
Chaos is around the corner, and chaos is a ladder - one a few teams are looking to climb. Last week, it felt like the league might crystallize into a clear hierarchy and be a dull parade to the final. Now the title race has been blown open, there’s a true three-way fight for the final playoff spot, one team has pulled out of a nosedive in spectacular fashion, and the pace of play is absurdly slow.
Which is to say, this week’s power rankings were really fun to put together.
1. Washington Freedom (+1)
They're back, baby. They may look battered like they just finished filming the third act of a Rocky movie, but they. Are. Back.
When Glenn Phillips and Jack Edwards did the hard work of consolidating after a top-order collapse, Obus Pienaar and Mukhtar Ahmed brought it home to get them to a defendable 170, which they then defended by bottling San Francisco up with the spin of Aponso and Rachin Ravindra (for two overs, anyway) and complementing them with the medium pace of Ian Holland. Aponso got the party started by getting Finn Allen to chop on and a whopping 61% of his deliveries were dot balls. That scoreboard pressure paved the way for Mitchell Owen - who had never taken more than three wickets in an innings in any format in his professional career - to take the first fivefer of MLC 2025, washing out his platinum duck with the bat and reasserting his bona fides as the MVP frontrunner.
Washington has looked wobbly at times, but getting off the mat against the league's top team and winning sends a message, the same message I wrote in this space in my week one power rankings: count a Ricky Ponting team out at your own peril.
Player of the Week: Glenn Phillips. His slow-burn 58 against San Francisco was exactly what Washington needed in the moment, and it followed on from his late-game heroics against Los Angeles. While the only catch he made this week was fairly routine, he continues to be reliable in the field. He has been an ideal middle-order bat who can stop collapses and finish chases, and has done both this week. That's the kind of guy teams win championships with.
2. San Francisco Unicorns (-1)
The stars aligned against San Francisco on Saturday as every single weakness I feared this team had in May came to the forefront.
They needed spin in the middle overs - Hassan Khan was just okay, and there was no second option. Their middle order needed to rally them to a win - Krishnamurthi went for an underwhelming 24 off 21 batting at four, and the third, fifth, sixth, and seventh batters went for a combined 11 runs off 20 deliveries. They sorely missed Tim Seifert as a release valve for the pressure Washington was able to accumulate. The Unicorns have wobbled before and gotten out of it, including Tuesday against Seattle, a game they had no business winning. It remains to be seen if this is the beginning of an unraveling or simply the delaying of the inevitable.
For what it's worth, I think they'll be fine. Xavier Bartlett was nothing short of outstanding on Saturday, and Haris Rauf will bounce back after an expensive spell that got really pricey in the death overs. Romario Shepherd has been a solid addition to the attack, and Finn Allen won't do… whatever that was supposed to be very often.
Player of the Week: Matt Short. Short tacked on two more big scores this week and even proved handy with the ball, taking 3-12 against Seattle on Tuesday. He was the only bat to really fire up in their chase against Washington, and he will continue to be a critical piece as the Unicorns look to get their sparkle back against Seattle on Tuesday at Lauderhill.
Speaking of which...
3. Seattle Orcas (+3)
Amazing how a changing your entire leadership nucleus right before a back-to-back can change the whole outlook of your season.
Seattle was floundering halfway through the campaign with no wins and nothing even remotely redeeming about their play (except maybe Shayan Jahangir, kinda, sometimes). The bat would go wrong or the ball would go wrong or both night after night. Just when it looked like they were about to hit rock bottom after giving up a massive partnership against New York on Friday, the bats saved the day with Shimron Hetmyer leading the charge and that rare gem of a true cricket walk-off, a spectacular last-ball six hit over the River End to snap Seattle out of their 10-game purgatory. They loved it so much they went out and did it again 24 hours later against Los Angeles, giving Sikandar Raza more wins in his nascent captaincy than Heinrich Klaasen had in 12 games in the role.
This looks like a different team: looser, more confident, more aggressive at the crease. They finally won the Aaron Jones Lottery, Harmeet Singh looked phenomenal against LAKR, and while the playoffs may or may not happen, at least the Orcas are fun now.
Also, my season-long hobby horse, Ayan Desai, finally got to bowl on Saturday. He gave up seven fewer runs than Cameron Gannon did the night before and also took a wicket, getting Sherfane Rutherford to hole out in the deep. Keep Calm and Play the Kids.
Player of the Week: Shimron Hetmyer. Nothing more needs to be said, but holy smokes. Hetmyer has given Seattle an iconic moment by capping an MLC record chase with an unbeaten 97 and delivered an encore the following night with a 64* off 26 to push him to second in MLC in both average and strike rate. He could unseat Mitchell Owen in the MVP race, but he has to lead Seattle to the playoffs first.
4. Texas Super Kings (No Change)
Can Faf get some of that brisket to go?
Texas’ captain carried his bat through the innings and knocked another ton in front of a record crowd of over 6,100 on Sunday to cap Texas’ four-game home stand with an emphatic win over New York. The batting has largely been Faf & Friends, but Mukkamalla continues to be good for 25-35 runs, and they may have found a reliable finisher in Donovan Ferreira. The bowling is still a concern, but if Akeal Hosein, Adam Milne, and Noor Ahmad are healthy, in form, and available at the same time, they should be okay. All three have yet to bowl in the same game.
Player of the Week: Akeal Hosein. Spinners are not supposed to be this devastating in the power play, but Hosein is the #5 T20 bowler in the world for a reason. The arm ball that got Nitish Kumar on Wednesday was absolutely filthy, and his 2-10 in three overs meant LAKR never had a prayer. Then he took an even more bonkers 3-15 in a four over spell against New York on Sunday night. Hosein has been must-see TV for Texas since coming back from Ireland, and he’s had success at Lauderhill before: he went 2-55 in 8 overs there against India in 2023.
5. MI New York (-2)
What a mess. The bowling has been a nightmare, giving up 200+ in four of the last five games, and only keeping Washington under that because the target was 189. They got blasted for 246 by San Francisco, 223 by TSK, and gave up an MLC record chase of 238 to Seattle in a dramatic last-ball finish that wiped out MLC’s record partnership and a brief glimpse of Nicholas Pooran at his best. Rushil Ugarkar unmade a promising night against Texas by bowling six wides in the 20th over. Michael Bracewell called for a review after he got bowled out by Romario Shepherd. The Razors can still save their season by beating moribund Los Angeles twice later this week to jump to six points… but should they?
Player of the Week: Tajinder Singh. The 32 year old who calls Houston home was something of a whipping boy for New York in the Oakland leg, with a couple of really egregious dropped catches and some underwhelming batting performances to the point that everything that went wrong seemed to be his fault in some way. Seeing him break out with a 95 against Seattle - the highest score for a domestic player in three seasons of MLC, surpassing his teammate Monank Patel from earlier this year - was a rare moment of joy in a joyless season for New York. Seattle didn't bowl their actual best bowler the entire night and didn't present the most daunting challenge in general, but Tajinder still had to play the shots, and he played some really, really good ones.
6. LA Knight Riders (-1)
DJ Bravo has taken some heat for the strategic retirement of Andre Fletcher against Washington, but that's not why the Knight Riders lost that game. They lost it, and the subsequent game against Seattle, for reasons that should be much more personal to their head coach.
Their pace attack is abysmal.
Anrich Nortje and Spencer Johnson would have been part of the plan when this roster was built, but Nortje withdrew with injury before the first game and Johnson has not been available either. Ali Khan is 1-93 in his last two games; Shadley van Schalkwyk is 1-88, Andre Russell is 1-77, and Jason Holder is 3-86 and might want to invest in juggling lessons. Those are not good numbers, and they have sunk the Knight Riders to the bottom of the table. They play New York on Thursday night and Saturday afternoon at Lauderhill and probably need to win both. With their backs against the wall, what do they do to plug the leaks?
Player of the Week: Andre Fletcher. The Spiceman looked cooked in Oakland, but he proved that he's as good once as he ever was with a 104 off 60 in the loss to Washington. Fletcher might need another big score somewhere down the line in Florida to deliver this team its first-ever playoff appearance.
Thank you so much for reading Stumps & Stripes! I’m having a blast getting all my ideas and thoughts out onto the page, and I hope you’re enjoying my writing. If so, I’d be grateful if you considered a free email subscription. I’m doing this purely for the love of the game, so the plan is for subscriptions to be free and stay that way.
Tomorrow, I have a piece on the role of an unheralded player and a well-heralded coach in breaking open the MLC title race. Stay tuned!