Minor League Cricket

Minor League Cricket (branded as the Sunoco Minor League Cricket championship for sponsorship reasons, and sometimes shortened to MiLC) is an American Twenty20 cricket developmental league for Major League Cricket which completed its first season in 2021, after it was delayed from a mid-to-late 2020 start due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It consists of 26 teams from four regions. The league began its regional draft process in late-August 2020, and a series of exhibition games in September 2020. The draft for the league began on June 4, 2021. The Strikers won the inaugural finals against the New Jersey Stallions by six wickets, with the Thunderbolts winning the 2022 finals against the Atlanta Fire by ten runs.

Formation
Talks of an American Twenty20 league started in November 2018, just before USA Cricket became the new governing body of cricket in the United States. In May 2021, USA Cricket announced they had accepted a bid by American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) for a $1 billion investment covering the league and other investments benefitting the U.S. national teams.

In an Annual General Meeting on February 21, 2020, it was announced that ACE was planning to launch its professional T20 league Major League Cricket in 2021, and a developmental league, Minor League Cricket that summer. USA Cricket CEO Iain Higgins stated that ACE had "demonstrated an understanding of the importance of addressing various fundamental issues within the domestic game in the United States", and listed a number of metropolitan areas that the developmental league planned to target for franchises.

Both leagues would be delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, with Minor League Cricket being delayed to 2021, and Major League Cricket provisionally postponed to 2022 (in May 2021, Major League Cricket would be further-delayed to 2023 due to both the pandemic, and the need to develop more facilities). Minor League Cricket would still soft launch in 2020 with an exhibition league;  the draft for the exhibition league began on August 22, 2020, with the teams releasing their squads on August 24.

2021
After the conclusion of the exhibition league, USA Cricket announced that they were planning to launch the inaugural season of Minor League Cricket in the spring of 2021. The season launched on July 31, 2021, and ran until October 3, 2021, where the Silicon Valley Strikers won the finals against the New Jersey Stallions by six wickets to win the inaugural season title. The sanctioning body announced plans to establish women's leagues in the future.

In February 2021, MLC announced plans for a youth version of Minor and Major League Cricket, as part of a pathway to give young cricketers the opportunity to play for official domestic teams and the national team. In June 2022, MLC announced the inaugural season of the Minor League Cricket Youth Tournament (shortened to MiLC Youth), with UST tapped as title sponsor for the tournament. The inaugural season of MiLC Youth was announced to be contested between 11 teams at the Prairie View Cricket Complex in Houston starting July 25, 2022. The finals for the inaugural season took place on July 29 at between the Dallas Mustangs and the New Jersey Stallions, in which the Stallions beat the Mustangs by two wickets.

2022
In January 2022, USA Cricket announced that the 2022 Minor League Cricket season would start on June 25, and conclude with the final on August 28. The 2022 finals were won by the Seattle Thunderbolts, who beat the Atlanta Fire by ten runs to win their maiden MiLC title. It was also announced in June 2022 that the budget for the 2022 season was more than $5 million.

2023
Amid a dispute with USA Cricket, tournament directors pushed for a June 10 start to the 2023 season of Minor League Cricket. However, this was pushed back to August 4, a week ahead of the conclusion of the 2023 Major League Cricket season. The season saw the discontinuation of two franchises, as well as the renaming of two other teams amid managerial shakeups. The season concluded on October 1, with the Dallas Mustangs defeating the NJ Somerset Cavaliers by 44 runs. All matches played during the season were played on either real grass or hybrid wickets.

In June, MiLC signed a deal with Cricket Canada and Boundaries North to help grow the game in the country through the potential formation of around 4-6 teams based in the area. MiLC announced that they were looking into the British Columbia and Greater Toronto Areas for expansion as soon as the 2024 season.

2024
The 2024 season is expected to be played following the conclusion of the 2024 Major League Cricket season, sometime in August.

Current teams
Unlike Major League Cricket, Minor League Cricket uses privately owned franchises. American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) announced 24 teams and their owners on August 15, 2020. On June 3, 2021, ACE added three more teams. Additionally, the teams are part of two conferences, which are each split into two divisions. This consists of the Pacific Conference, split into the Western and Central divisions, and the Atlantic Conference, split into the Eastern and Southern divisions.

League structure
Teams in each division will play anywhere from 14 to 16 games in the league stage. Once the league stage is completed, the top two teams in each division will advance to the quarterfinals, wherein the top team in each division will face the second-placed team in the other division of their conference for a best-of-three series. The remaining games will be regular knockout matches, with the semifinals sending one team from each conference to the final. The official schedule and the venues of the playoffs was released on September 20, 2021, by Major League Cricket. The league structure was changed ahead of the 2023 season, with teams in each division now playing 10 games in the league stage. The top team of each division advances directly to the Super 8s, whereas the next two teams advance into the knockout stage. During the knockout stage, a total of 4 teams advance to the Super 8s, wherein the top two teams face each other in the finals.

The inaugural season of Minor League Cricket had a total prize pool of $250,000, the highest ever in American cricket. This was increased to $350,000 for the 2022 season, $150,000 of which went to the tournament champions, the Seattle Thunderbolts.

Media
Matches are streamed by Major League Cricket on its YouTube channel and the streaming platform FanCode.