Europe still untapped market for cricket: Santner

Europe still remains an untapped market for cricket and playing in tournaments like the European T20 Premier League is in a way a contribution to the growth of the game, New Zealand’s Mitchell Santner said on Monday. Santner is leading the Edinburgh Castle Rockers in the inaugural edition of the ETPL with his team perched atop the points table with five wins and a no result in six matches so far.

“Growing the game is the most important part. It’s a very untapped market in Europe for cricket. If that takes off, that is going to be awesome,” Santner told PTI in an exclusive interaction.

“… whatever we can do to try to do that. Playing for New Zealand is still a great thing; I’m still really proud to do that and if we can grow the game and these kind of franchise leagues outside of that, that’s perfect.”

“If it means that we can come and play in beautiful places, beautiful parts of the world to try to grow the game and put on a show for some fans, I’m more than happy to do that,” Santner said. He said different players stepping up at various stages and retaining the winning combination has been the reasons behind his team’s success.

“Boys are gelling nicely on and off the field, which is nice. It’s great for the local boys, the Scottish, Irish and the Dutch boys to rub shoulders with some international players,” Santner said.

“The standard has been good and we’re only halfway. We only got together three days before the start of tournament. We’re still feeling it out from the start, but the boys have been really good (with) different guys stepping up at different stages in different games.”