Mahesh Bhupathi courts cricket—a second innings with ‘legends league’
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mumbai: Young fans gathered in a sunny sports stadium chanting ‘DJ Bravo! DJ Bravo!’ is not an everyday sight in Goa, a state traditionally obsessed with football.
It’s unusual still, given that Dwayne ‘DJ’ Bravo, the legendary Trinidadian cricketer, retired from all forms of the game in 2024. But the legend lives on, and so does the interest in building a business on the legends cricket leagues—a T20 format rolled out in 2020s that brings together retired international stars in franchise-based teams. These were scenes from the matches hosted at Verna’s 1919 Sportz Cricket Stadium in Goa, which was home to the first ever World Legends Pro T20 League, starring retired legendary cricketers from India and around the world, including Bravo, New Zealand opener Martin Guptill, Australian batsman Shaun Marsh, legendary South African fast bowler Dale Steyn, and West Indies hard-hitter Chris Gayle, along with and a bevy of Indian stars such as Shikhar Dhawan, S.
Sreesanth, Harbhajan Singh, Suresh Raina and Dinesh Karthik. Much like in the movies and music industries, the business of cricket has been testing out nostalgia as a factor to pull crowds and build a sustainable cricket league outside the Indian Premier League.
World Legends Pro T20 is the latest among them, founded by SG Sports and Entertainment, launched in 2022 and backed by industrial goods firm APL Apollo Group. “In general, to do anything significant in the sports business, there has to be an element of cricket," Mahesh Bhupathi, former international tennis champion and chief executive officer of SG Sports, told Mint in an interview.
“That is how money flows in India. A few have tried (legends’ leagues) before, but not followed
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