Rally 'Round The Struggle Bus

West Indies players have had a rough MLC 2025. Have they worn themselves out on the franchise circuit?

Halfway through the MLC season, I’m tired of watching Nicholas Pooran crash out night after night.

One of the most electrifying T20 batsmen in the world in the last 12 months, a man who led the IPL in sixes this season and finished fourth in the MVP race with Lucknow, Pooran retired from international cricket with the West Indies to pursue a lucrative franchise career, but his form with MI New York - the team which, I must stress, he captains - has not reflected his reputation or the demand for his services. He has 66 runs off 66 deliveries faced and has hit just five boundaries in five appearances so far this season. Rather than coming in third and accelerating a chase against 247 for MI New York on Monday by swinging for the ropes, his 15 runs off 17 balls singlehandedly derailed their chase of that huge target. If his bowlers didn’t already cost the team the game by giving up 246, his batting effort certainly did.

It would be easy to write a thinkpiece just on Pooran’s struggles in what was supposed to be a smooth transition into captaincy that has been best with player withdrawals and injuries, but this is not something totally exclusive to Pooran.

I could put together a decent lineup on paper just from the West Indies players suiting up for the six MLC franchises, and while Sherfane Rutherford and Romario Shepherd have made solid impacts since joining their respective sides from international duty - Shepherd took two huge wickets for San Francisco on Monday and Rutherford punctuated LA’s chase against Seattle on Sunday - it hasn’t been enough to outweigh the collective struggle of West Indies players in MLC 2025. With 14 MLC games in the books out of a scheduled 30, Windies internationals are performing well below their counterparts from Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand that comprise most of the rest of the players classified as imports by the league.

Here are the full numbers for full members with three or more international players in MLC:

BATTING (Average, SR)
New Zealand (38.13, 160.81)
South Africa (35.46, 158.97)
Australia (35.00, 180.83)
West Indies (17.52, 148.28)
(Afghanistan’s batting sample size is way too small to consider seriously, but in 2 total innings, they have averaged 8.00 at a strike rate of 25.00, if you’re curious)

BOWLING (Wickets, Average, Economy)
Australia (35, 24.74, 8.97)
New Zealand (23, 28.91, 9.09)
Afghanistan (19, 22.58, 9.16)
West Indies (15, 42.00, 9.77)
South Africa (3, 52.33, 9.92)

Those batting numbers are downright shocking, but the bowling numbers aren’t much better. Ian Holland and Mitchell Owen have taken more wickets between them than every West Indies player in MLC combined this season, and the three Afghanistan bowlers that made it into the competition this year - Noor Ahmad, Naveen-ul-Haq, and Waqar Salamkheil - have been somewhat expensive, but it doesn’t sting as much if wickets are consistently falling. A team can live with giving an economy in the 9s if they bowl the other side out in 15 overs.

Granted, some of these players are not regulars in the national team, like Mayers, or they are getting on in years like Sunil Narine, Russell, and Kieron Pollard (who has found a modest seam of form with the bat for New York). If that described the whole cohort, I might be able to overlook it, but Pooran is 29, Shimron Hetmyer is 28, Rovman Powell is 31, and Jason Holder is 33 - all prime cricketing years. The latter three got a late start because of international duty, but their impact since returning has been mixed. Powell has scored five runs on six balls in two innings. Not great!

What I think we are seeing instead is that the amount of cricket available to players willing to hire themselves out grossly outstrips the ability of the human body to play all of it and maintain a high level of performance.

Pooran has played a whopping 73 T20s since June 1, 2024, starting with the World Cup, then MLC 2024, the CPL, the ILT20, IPL 2025, and T20I series against England and Bangladesh late in 2024. Rutherford, Shepherd, Powell, and Holder have played similarly demanding schedules. Hetmyer didn’t play in the World Cup but is still on his fourth franchise league in less than 12 months, as are Russell and Pollard. Mayers is on his fifth.

At this point, do these guys even have a home address?

It is no secret that Cricket West Indies doesn’t offer the best pay for contracted players and is struggling to keep up with the franchise market demand for its best and brightest, costing them much of Pooran’s prime and likely several more players in the near future as the allure of franchise money attracts premium talent as intended. But pursuing every franchise opportunity simply isn’t viable for these players to maintain their form and cash all those checks. Franchise money doesn’t care where a player is from, but it also doesn’t care if a player burns himself out trying to get it.

As the saying goes, if you don’t plan maintenance for your equipment, your equipment will plan maintenance for you, and that maintenance can begin at a deeply inopportune time… like in the middle of a season where you’re being asked to lead a team making a playoff push. Between the demands of cricket as a sport and the transient nature of the franchise scene as it stands, players like Pooran are especially vulnerable to burnout. Four or five weeks without live competition is helpful, but there are still training camps and practices and no time to put the bat down and just rest. Push will come to shove, and these players will need to be much more selective about where they play their cricket in order to maintain their value on the market or they will shorten their careers trying to stack big paychecks and compromise the big paydays in places like India along the way.

In the long run, that might be as good for the franchises as it is for the players. Nobody wants out-of-form players; they’re bad for the brand, and there will be plenty of seats available as time wears on if MLC’s brand becomes entwined with that of exhausted star players playing cricket like they’re exhausted. Franchise-focused players showing the restraint to turn down opportunities - yes, even if that means they don’t play here - for the less-tangible value of rest, recovery, and a little extra conditioning will make them more valuable on the market in the long run and create more opportunities for new cult stars to emerge and lighten the burden of entertaining worldwide audiences placed upon the small cadre of players who tour the globe living out of suitcases that cost more than the gate receipts for a 3:00 game at Grand Prairie in June.

This may sort itself out in the near future; MLC and the ILT20 will be required by the ICC to reduce to four international players from their current six in the near future to maintain formal T20 sanctioning and the benefits that come with it, while the IPL is considering an expanded season that could keep players like Pooran and Hetmyer away from MLC. But fewer leagues don’t mean fewer games, and a longer season in the world’s top league simply adds to the stakes of burnout. It’s weighing heavily on West Indies players now, but this could just as easily be coming to a New Zealand or South Africa cohort near you in the future. It’s time for cricketers to exercise the leverage of demand for their services and follow Marshawn Lynch’s advice: take care of their bodies, take care of their mentals, and take care of their chicken.

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Thank you for so much for reading Stumps & Stripes! This project has been a blast for me, and I’m excited to see it continue. If you like what you just read, check out my latest Major League Cricket power rankings, which predated New York getting thumped by San Francisco on Monday night:

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