MLC’s San Francisco Unicorns Co-Owners, Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan | cricexec podcast ep 8

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America’s Major League Cricket has exploded onto the global cricket scene. 

And one of its most fascinating franchises is the San Francisco Unicorns.

Led by Head Coach Shane Watson and a star-studded squad including Pat Cummins, Haris Rauf and Finn Allen, they were the runners-up in the 2024 tournament. 

They’ve also created a unique brand and culture. 

On this episode we’re joined by the team’s co-owners, Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan – two incredibly successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, lifelong business partners, and cricket fans who decided to embark on a sports adventure.

  • They share insights with us on their approach to ownership including, giving Shane Watson his first ever coaching gig,
  • Their data driven approach to building the team,
  • The Unicorns’ unique name and branding,
  • And their special partnership with Cricket Victoria in Australia,
  • And so much more. 

Transcript

Zee: All right, we’re here today with the co-owners of Major League Cricket at San Francisco Unicorns, of course, Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan. Thank you both for joining us on the podcast today.

Anand Rajaraman: Pleasure. Thanks for having us.

Venky: Great to be here.

Zee: You know, our podcast has been around for a little while, but this episode has a couple of firsts, right? This is the first time we’re having team owners on, which I’m very excited about. And there’s a reason I wanted you first. This is also the first time that I’m having two guests on at once. So that’s another first, but the two of you have simplified this because your bios are extremely similar, right?

Because the two of you have been working together for a very long time in pretty much every role for most of your careers. So why don’t we start talking about, you know, before we get into the Unicorns, like the partnership and the friendship that the two of you have built over what seems to be, you know, two and a half, three decades.

Venky: You make us sound old here.

Zee: You’re probably younger than I am.

Anand Rajaraman: Hahaha!

Venky: I wish. No, we, you know, again, we met as grad students at Stanford. I was fortunate I had a car. He did not have a car, so I had to take him grocery shopping. So that was the, I guess the beginning, right? And so I think we’ve been doing stuff together for a long time now. And it’s been across mostly in the world of tech, you know, starting companies, you know, running venture funds and so on.

I think cricket has been a first for both of us doing it together, but it’s been a lot of fun so far.

Anand Rajaraman: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve started two companies together and two venture funds and most recently the cricket.

And I can tell you of all the things that we’ve done, this is the one that we have the least background for.  So we sort of jumped into it with very little, know, tech we knew, we know tech, we know venture capital. So we do those things, but cricket, we just enjoy the sport, regular fans, and then we jumped with both feet.

Zee: Look, as we go over this conversation, I think one theme is going to be that that might have been a very good thing that you didn’t have a background in cricket because it’s allowed you to look at this venture in kind of a refreshing way and led to some awesome outcomes from my perspective.

But let’s go into that right away. Right. So you are obviously both very tech savvy and very startup savvy. When you decided to, to take advantage of this opportunity and jump into the Unicorns. You, you know, you, you approached it fresh. What was the, the strategy or the thinking behind, Hey, it’s a new league. It’s a new franchise in a new territory for the sport. How are we going to build this organization?

Venky: So I think again, I would say that a lot of thinking so far has largely been focused on MLC as a whole, not the Unicorns in particular, given that it is a nascent league at this point. And it’s all about the success of the league, and then the franchise sort of will benefit from that.

So yes, so the MLC itself is a startup venture, right? It is really something which is, we really don’t have cricket at that quality in the US.

So bringing that quality of cricket in a franchise T20 manner is, fits every definition of a startup, right?

So that’s how we’ve approached it. You don’t have all the answers.

You know a few things and you keep running as fast as you can till someone says, you can’t run or this is the wrong direction. You re-focus quickly and then try and figure things out, right? And so I think it’s been a real startup enterprise so far and we’re very pleased with where we’ve gotten off.

Obviously there have been things that like with every startup where you wish you may have done things differently, but that’s just life, right? And so in a startup and so you just are happy with where we’ve ended up so far.

Anand Rajaraman: The way I would suggest it is that we approach this venture from first principles, just as we would any other company. Under first principles, it was clear that there is now a significant cricket-loving audience in the US as a critical mass. And there’s a great new format, T20, which lasts three hours, unlike the longer formats that were earlier there in cricket, which are not suitable for bringing to the US.

So we have the right format of the game and we have the critical mass audience. So from first principles, it seemed like the right time to bring cricket to the US. So that was the first thing. And then once we decided to do that, from first principles, it’s sort of clear that what you need to do is to create the best cricket product possible and grow the interest of the cricket-loving and the sports-loving public in the US. So that’s always how you build the sport.

You have to get the best players in the world to come and compete against each other in exciting tournaments. And that will naturally lead to great games, close games and so on, and lead to audience interest and engagement. So that’s kind of how we approach this venture.

Zee: So I think you’re both and Venky in particular being a little modest in that while you approach it as MLC, I’ve seen a lot of differentiation and uniqueness in the Unicorns franchise that I think are very interesting. Right.

So let’s start with the branding and the identity, right. From the name, right. Which I think is just so brilliant and perfect, right. For the, you know, the part of the country that the team is from to the visuals, right? To, you know, you’ve got some local players.

To the fact that you’ve got a full-time, year-round presence and a team that’s kind of working around, you know, the calendar to develop your presence.

So there were some things you did different, but let’s talk about the branding and the identity of the team. How did you approach that?

Anand Rajaraman: So that’s… Venky, you go for it? Yeah, go for it. Yeah.

Venky: There’s a very funny story here, right? So we were trying to figure out what would actually capture sort of the ethos of San Francisco, Silicon Valley, our whole Bay Area, right? And so we really loved unicorns for a bunch of reasons because unicorns not just from a startup point of view, it means a billion dollar outcome, a great successful outcome. But the whole notion of a unicorn is someone who’s special, unique.

You know, completely a one-off and that’s defined San Francisco and our whole Bay area, right? We celebrate people who are different and you know, who accomplished great things. So it just felt like a great name. So we took it to the league and said, Hey, we both, Anand and I actually independently came up with his name and we were just like, yeah, both of us came up with it independently. Must be a great name. Went to the league and the league was like, are you kidding us? There’s no way in hell we let you guys go out with a name like this. Right. And so it literally was like a two

Three week struggle where we just said, we’re not moving. And a couple things. One is when we started our first company, it was a company called Junglee, okay? And this was in the late 90s.

Zee: Yeah, which is by the way what my mother called me repeatedly throughout my childhood. So I I really like the name

Venky: Exactly. So the first big customer we had who also became an investor sort of came to us and said, one of the conditions of our investment in you guys is you have to change the name, right? We don’t think it’s corporate enough. And so we just looked at them and said, sure, you tell us what name and, you know, run a focus group. if you guys can, sure enough, nothing happened. Right. But that name was a great name. And it’s still, you know, people still remember us for that name, even though the company existed for two years.

Anand Rajaraman: Hi.

Venky: So when the league came back to us and said, you know, you know, this name doesn’t fly, both Anand and I looked at each other and we’re like, hey, we have to go with this name. We know that if somebody doesn’t like the name so much, there is a lot of goodness about that name. And, and because, you know, good names are either completely empty vessels or they, or they get people, you know, feeling a little discomfort, which means they will remember it much more. And then we had something really interesting happen. We had a part, we have a partnership with Cricket Victoria.

And the CEO of Cricket Victoria, Nick Cummins, he just was like, this is an awesome name. Don’t let the league sort of get you off this name. And so we just went in with redoubled effort and we just said, guys, we’re just going with this sort of effectively take a hike. And so that’s how the name sort of came into being.

Anand Rajaraman: Eventually, of course, fans love the name and it stuck and then the league now loves the name. So it’s all, you know, it’s all been good since then.

Zee: So yeah, and if it helps also, my two young daughters, seven and 12, also love the name because they’re all obsessed with unicorns at that age.

Venky: Exactly, and that’s why the League did not want, you know what I’m saying, they were like, hey is it too, know, thing and we’re just like, no, it’s the right name and you know, it’s very funny, right? It’s actually, you know, it’s one of the more traditional sort of logos. It’s actually on the coat of arms of the royal family in England, right? Like you can’t get more traditional than that and so you’re what the heck is this, you know?

Anand Rajaraman: And then of course, it allows us to have these giveaway hats during the games with the horns on them, which are hugely popular with fans in the stands. So, you know, that’s great.

Zee: That’s awesome.

Yeah, it’s worked out well. So Venky, alluded to actually the cricexec startup story inadvertently.

You know, when we were a nothing, startup, right? Trying to get an audience in the industry.

One of the first executives to actually follow us on LinkedIn and follow us on Twitter and start engaging with our content was Nick Cummins, right? Yeah, earlier in his career. So I have a lot of love for Nick.

Venky: really?

Zee: And this actually brings me to another point of differentiation between the unicorns and the other franchises in the MLC, which is there’s a big IPL presence in the MLC, right? Three of the teams are outright owned by the IPL franchises. One of them, you the Orcas is a sort of joint venture between, know, the Della and the Delhi Capitals. And then Washington Freedom technically doesn’t have IPL ownership, although a gentleman who I have all the world of respect for Dheeraj Malhotra, who’s phenomenal, is this CEO and he has a super strong IPL background and connection.

So the unicorns are kind the outlier Unicorn in that sense as well, that you don’t have IPL ownership and to the extent that you formed a partnership with another sort of organization, it was in Australia. So tell me about sort of how that came about and the thinking of taking that approach.

Venky: Yeah, to be honest, it’s not like it was, you know, it wasn’t like it was sort of some grand plan or any of that. It just was, you know, to be very transparent. was like, listen, you know, in a startup world that we come from, you want the least complexity, right? And so the least complex part was really us running it and having, you know, a cricketing partnership with someone who knew cricket. We know we don’t, you know, that’s not a core expertise.

And so this just felt like a very simple way to get in the game, try to understand what was going on. And it has worked out really well for us so far was basically we pick simplicity and every startup founder will do the same. And that again, is the way to think about it.

Wasn’t like we had some deep thoughts about IPL plus or minus. It was just like having one more entity in the tent would just make our lives more complicated and trying to figure everything out. And so that’s sort of how we thought about it. And Anand, can add to it.

Anand Rajaraman: Yeah, look, I think that that’s completely fair. We are startup guys, right? We are founders. And it felt like what we’re really good at doing is building something in the early stages, right?

So of a startup, of a team, and setting the culture, and getting it going, and so forth. And it felt like the right way to do that is for us to do it the way we would do it.

In any startup, we want to sort of build the unicorns as a team of Silicon Valley with kind of that true Silicon Valley kind of And the way to do that, this felt like the right way of doing it.

Zee: But it’s worked. So tell me about how it’s been working, you know, because it seems like it’s been going great.

Venky: Yeah, no, I’d say it’s, you listen, we’ve just like with any other company we would be either investors in or operators in, you want a very, very good leadership, right? You want the leadership to be, you want to hire really, really great people and you want to work with people who you respect, trust, and, you know, have good working relationships with. So to start with, I think we built a really good relationship. We had a meeting of the minds with Nick Cummins, you know, he’s a great a friend of ours and vice versa. And so, you know, it really helped to be able to have that trust and, you know, belief and because we know like, just to be very clear, this is not a space we understand well. So we have to lean on people who understand the space well, and you want a lot of trust with those people, right? And so Nick has been a pillar for us at the end of the day. And you know, David was someone Nick who came really, really highly recommended from Nick. And we were delighted that he wanted to move here because that was sort of something that was going to be very important for us.

And so just having someone, you know, again, it’s been a great relationship so far with David, you know, it’s been, culture of it has been amazing, which is a little surprising to be honest, given that he came from a world of cricket. We come from the world of startups. That was a little bit of a question mark, but it’s been a, it’s been sort of delightful so far working with him. And so having someone like him running the show, give him a whole bunch of, you know, we don’t get in his way too much. That’s been another sort of way we do it. Get great people, let them run, don’t get in the way and sort of good things happen, right? And so David sort of done a phenomenal job for us so far and was really excited about that, right? And so that’s the way we’ve sort of approached this, you

Anand Rajaraman: And that’s on the business side. On the cricketing side as well, we’ve had a great relationship with Cricket Victoria where they’re the head of high performance, Graham Manu, who runs the high performance side. He’s been awesome as well, as have the coaching staff from Cricket Victoria. the nice thing is that we’ve been, one of the things that we wanted to do was to, because this is the team of Silicon Valley,

And we wanted to bring that element into cricket and into the way the team is done. So we tried to be data driven in our choices and see, can we build a culture around that? And to their credit, the Cricket Mercurial coaching staff headed by Graham and Nick have completely embraced that approach.

And we’ve sort of been able to try some new things using data, for example, in terms of team selection and so on. That really, they embraced and they’ve taken it forward and actually put on the field and it paid dividends on the field as well. So it’s been a great partnership.

Zee: I will jump in and add, I am a big fan of David White. I’ve spent a lot of time with him. I think he’s doing great things for your team and your organization. And it’s great to have him in the country.

If I have one issue with David, it’s with his name, because there are so many David Whites. There’s another David White in the MLC. There’s David Whites everywhere, and it’s hard on my contacts, but I can’t blame him for that. So I met his

Anand Rajaraman: Yep.

Venky: Actually, that David White was part of our team for a while, right? Or whatever.

Anand Rajaraman: Yeah, so they were very confusing for a little bit.

Zee: That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I did meet David’s mother at the, at the finals at the playoffs this year, the MLC, she came out and so she will be where I’ve had any concerns about his name. but great family.

But so on, on the, you know, so the point that you’re talking about sort of the data and the analytics and the sort of slightly different approach, you know, you did have a phenomenal season this year.

Zee: Right? You got to the finals. and this is after the first year where you finished fifth, you didn’t even make the playoffs. So can you tell me about a little bit of the journey from one to the other and how, if at all, this approach you’re talking about was involved?

Anand Rajaraman: Yeah, no, absolutely. Look, the first year was, you know, just to be very transparent, we didn’t have too much time even into the lead up into the tournament. was, you know, we picked, I think the player selection was who was available and they could field 11 on the, you know, and it turned out we did end up going with some great players and so on, right? But it was not a team that we, know, we or anybody put a great deal of thought into the exact composition of the team and the balance and so on. So starting in the second year, we made the conscious choice to be data driven, but also to rebuild the team in a certain way. And the idea was to capture the Silicon Valley spirit, which is, well, what are you very good at Silicon Valley? We are very good at identifying startups today that become the unicorns of tomorrow, right? And so that’s kind of, so we said we’re going to build the team around players, who are like that, who are early in their careers, fairly early on, but who we think are going to be the superstars of tomorrow, the unicorns of tomorrow. And bet on that. And bet on, we create a sort of youngish core group who can stay together for a long period of time and sort of take the team forward. And this is how great franchises are built, right? So we committed to that approach.

And then use the data and the models to identify the players that we want to be part of that framework. And so this is what led us to, if you look at our team, we had Matthew Short and Fraser McGurk and Sanjay Krishnamurthy, right? On the domestic, Hassan Khan, Finn Allen, right? These guys are all kind of, they’re not household names yet, but they’re knocking on the doors.

Venky: for now.

Zee: Yep.

Anand Rajaraman: Right? it’s that, you know, and so that’s the way to think about, think about all these guys. And then we added in some, you know, certified grades, like, like, like, like a Pat Cummins or had us off to sort of round out the, you know, to round out the, the Inglis also who’s in that package. So Josh Inglis and Matthew Shaw and all these guys are going to be part of Australian 11 going forward, but they’re not, you know, kind of there yet.

And so we caught them at a very interesting phase in their career, I think.

Zee: Let me ask you about Sanjay because I’ve spent a lot of time with, have another cricket franchise that’s focused on US cricket called 1709 cricket. I just did an interview with him down in Dallas during the minor league cricket finals. And obviously I love Sanjay. Sanjay is a superstar. That’s not a secret anymore after what he did sort of last season. Sanjay is also a local kid, right? And so tell me about

Anand Rajaraman: Mm-hmm.

Zee: How much that factors into sort of building your team? Yes, you identify stars, but especially in the Bay Area, it doesn’t hurt to have local kids. You know, he goes to SJSU, his family now lives in the Bay Area. So how much does that go into your team approach thinking?

Anand Rajaraman: Absolutely.

I think it’s great that he’s here and it’s good for us to promote the local talent as well and it’s great for the team and great for him as well. I don’t think it factored into the decision that he would be in the playing 11. He got into the playing 11 entirely on his merit, that he was in the team. But it doesn’t hurt that he’s from the Bay Area.

Venky: No, we picked him in the first season in the inaugural draft as one of the under 20s, right? He was not part of the regular draft. He was actually one of the rookie drafts that they had, a special draft, right? But the reality was Watto and others were super impressed with him. So he was not really, to be very honest, super high on the radar in the initial draft, but the…

Anand Rajaraman: Yeah.

Rookie.

Venky: Coaching staff was super high on him after season one. And so really, think part of it has also been just staying in touch, making sure you should talk about, having the program off. Yeah.

Anand Rajaraman: Yeah, no, Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that happened, think, and this is part of, I think, perhaps what sets us apart is that the coaching staff identified some of our domestic players as, you know, as people that we wanted to develop for the future. Sanjay is one of them. And we sent a group of them, including Sanjay, off to Australia for training. And they played in a domestic tournament there. And they were given a coaching program, a fitness regimen to follow, for example, that Sanjay followed. And Sanjay credits that fitness regimen for the development of the six hitting abilities now, right? So that he’s able to clear the boundary quite easily because he’s been following that regimen over the last year. So this is part of the investment that, and we’re doing this again going forward, we’ve identified.

Some of the key domestic players from this last season who we will continue to make that investment, including Sanjay and Hassan and a bunch of others.

Zee: Fantastic. So shifting gears very slightly, talk about other members of your organization. I want to hit on a couple before we wrap up. One is Pat Cummins, right? So I have a ton of respect for Pat Cummins. I look at him as, know, he does so much outside of cricket that’s so amazing, right? With ventures and with his causes that he endorses. You know, to me, it’s almost like I plan to have

Zee: Pat on the show, I just have to convince him. Shane Watson actually is gonna be on the show in a few weeks. So another one I’m a big fan of. But with Pat, I look at him and I go, know, Pat is, if anything, an entrepreneur who happens to play cricket, right? And that’s just one of that. When I look at him, that’s his essence. does all these, he’s, cricket is almost like.

He’s obviously one of the world’s best cricketers, but he’s using it to build a brand that he’s using to do other things. And in the same way that Kevin Durant came to the Golden State Warriors and said, I don’t just want to learn basketball. want to learn business and organization and startups. Right. And that was part of the selling point. Allegedly, from what I hear that Chamath Palihapatia, who at the time was one of the co-owners, sold him on to get him to the Warriors. I feel like Pat coming to the unicorns is partly that. And I’ve heard him say as much, right?

Like I didn’t just come to play cricket for another team. It was the excitement of the Silicon Valley aura and these two owners who are successful entrepreneurs. And I want to learn from that. Tell me about recruiting him and how much that has been part of the process.

Anand Rajaraman: I think we, in all these things, there the element of timing and luck that we were very fortunate, right? I acknowledge that. So I’ll give credit to Venky, first of all, for dreaming big about Pat Cummins and saying we should, basically here’s what happened. We built this team of unicorns and we were working on it. And then I was chatting with Venky. Venky said,

These are all great, but they’re all up and coming and we need some, you know, captain with some experience – we’ll target Pat Cummins. I was like, I just looked at him like he was crazy. I was like, Pat, never going to come and play in MLC. Right? So it’s not even worth trying. Let’s give it a try, right? And so I just, you know, went to Graham and Nick and said, you know, Venky’s suggesting that we should try to get Pat Cummins and they looked at me like I was crazy.

They were like, Pat’s never going to come play here.

But I said, let’s just ask him. Let’s just ask him so that we felt that we’ve done our due diligence and he can pass. Now, it turned out to be very fortuitous from a timing point of view because it turns out that Pat is very closely associated with one of the minority investors in our team, which we didn’t know at the time, gentleman by the name of Devesh Makan, who runs a fund in Silicon Valley called Iconic he manages.

Pat has invested in that fund and Devesh helps him manage some of his money. And Pat had chatted with Devesh about, hey, is there a potential potentially maybe playing in the MLC and stuff like this.

So, so when Nick reached out, the whole circle was kind of completed and we were able to go through the mesh as well because now Pat trusts trusted us, you know, has some connectivity through through Devesh already, who’s one of the minority investors. And so we were able to sort of get set up a conversation with him.

And during that conversation, the key point, was that, Pat said his key interest is not playing in another T20 tournament. He sees this as a special tournament, first of all, because it’s in America. It’s opening up a whole new market for cricket, number one. And number two, being affiliated with Silicon Valley and getting the opportunity to learn and get involved with startups and do that kind of thing. And we, of course, are, you delighted to help him in any way to make that happen. So that was kind of how that that circle was completed.

Venky: And after the season, think Pat, we sort of circle back and just felt like Pat had a great experience here. It’s, know, to be very honest, given his international commitments, you know, it’s not clear how much and when he can play again. So, but we just are delighted to have him on the team. just as a, again, another resource that we can lean on who understands cricket like a hundred times better than us. Right.

Anand Rajaraman: It’s quite amazing, right? It’s just that the team atmosphere when he’s around is entirely different. It’s not just his on-field contribution. I think the whole team believes that they’re at a different level when he’s around. think that feeling is very palpable when he’s around.

Zee: Great leaders have that effect and I was down in North Carolina for some of the matches this summer and I felt that too, right? They walked differently when he was around and when he arrived. So I want to be respectful of time, but before we wrap, I do want to ask you about one other member. I could talk to you about your whole team. I could talk to you about your organization down to Zayanya, who’s, you know, a part of your marketing team. I was known as Z until she showed up and now she’s Z and I call myself Z number

Anand Rajaraman: She’s great, right?

Anand Rajaraman: Well, you have the two E’s at the end of your name, which she doesn’t.

Zee: around her because I know it’s good. That’s true. But I deferred to her on my letter because I know it’s good for me.

But you all around, you know Liam Plunkett, we just did a feature, a big feature in cricexec on his Academy launch and the LPC launch sorry and what he’s doing for Cricket in the US. I could talk about your whole organization. But I do, before we go, I do want to talk about Shane Watson because I do think the world of him, I think

Venky: Yeah

Zee: As a leader, a coach, as a thinker, right? I’m a big when I have him on the podcast a lot of it’s gonna be about his book and how innovative that is. But talk to me about bringing him on board, the decision to bring him on board. Like to me that was the cherry on top of the unicorns organization construction and the impact he’s had.

Venky: Yeah. So I’ll just give you like a two minute, a story, which is quite funny. so when we first talked to Shane, you know, he came in and he was talking about his whole approach, which is based on his book, which, you know, is all about the mental side of cricket, right? And I’m sure you’ve, you’ve seen it. And so he was saying, Hey, you know, you’re giving us the backstory. And he said, listen, I went to this, sports psychologist in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he just, turned me around and I’ve really sort of taken that, you know, sort of thinking and formulated it into cricket and how we should, you know, how we should coach cricket, right? How you should play cricket. And so, you know, I just like the sports psychologist in North Carolina sort of was a little bit of a sort of a trigger for me. So I said, who’s this guy? And so he gave me the name of this guy and I was like, Hey, my 23 year old son is going to see this guy next month, you know?

And so I was obviously already sold on this guy and so and he did turn my son’s sort of career around as well and so it was just like completely that was just like such a random connection but sometimes those random connections just make it all sort of real and so totally jived with his mental approach and how he was approaching it and absolutely love him from that point of view.

Anand Rajaraman: It’s been great as well. the coaching, the MLC one was actually Shane’s, what was first coaching stint. And you can actually see over the course of the year, by the time MLC two came around here, he was also coaching in Pakistan, in the Pakistan senior league before that. You could see even over that one year, how much he had learned and evolved as a coach. so by the time season two came around,

He was entirely in his groove, And that, I think that was partly, and he’s also been great about being open about adopting the data and so on. So that’s been great as well.

Venky: And to Anand’s earlier point, again, it’s one more bet on someone who’s, know, again, Shane’s obviously a rock star from a cricketing player point of view, but from a coaching point of view, it was something again, you know, it was like a bet that he’s going to be a great coach someday, right? And so.

Anand Rajaraman: That’s very different if you look at many of the other franchises. They have coaches that go back with the IPL franchises for many years, if not decades. We made a bet, just as we made a bet on. Thankfully, it’s paid off very well.

Zee: Yeah, I would say it’s paid off in spades, just like many of the bets the two of you seem to have made in sort of building and starting this organization.

Venky, Anand, I can’t thank you enough for joining the show and sharing your time and thoughts and experiences. And obviously, best of luck to the franchise in the years to come. I know there’s a lot of work being done to bring a permanent home to the Bay Area for the team as well.

And I look forward to hearing about that and all your other successes.

Venky: Thank you so much, Zee.

Anand Rajaraman: Thanks Zee, it was great talking to you.

 

 

Name of Author: Zee Zaidi

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Champions Trophy: broadcasters may push T20 format due to delay

Photo Credit: Instagram Photo of @icctrophytour With the Champions Trophy 2025 schedule yet to be announced, uncertainty surrounds the tournament's...

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