Sanjay Dutt buys team in retired cricketers' T20 league

UAE-based Masters Champions League to kick off next year

Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt has purchased a franchise in the UAE-based Masters Champions League (MCL), a Twenty20 tournament for retired international cricketers, for an undisclosed sum. Dutt’s wife Maanyata is learnt to have worked on and closed the deal, as the actor has been serving a jail sentence in connection with his alleged role in the 1993 Bombay blasts.

MCL, which will kick off next year, will feature retired international cricketers in six franchises in the inaugural season. Among some of the prominent names that have already announced their participation in the tournament are former Indian batsman Virender Sehwag, West Indian legend Brian Lara and former South African captain Graeme Smith. 

Indranil Das Blah, managing partner at talent management company CAA KWAN who will be running Dutt’s yet-to-be-named MCL team as chief executive, said: “The teams will be named after sun signs. We will be gunning for ‘Leo’... Most of the paper work has been completed and the auction or draft will be conducted by the end of November this year.”

Refusing to comment on the size of the deal, Blah said: “Mr Dutt is passionate about cricket and he saw this as an opportunity to own an asset which will see its valuation increase over the next four years or so.”

This is not Dutt’s first sports venture. In 2012, he had set up the Super Fight League, along with Raj Kundra, former co-owner actor of the Rajasthan Royals IPL team and actor Shilpa Shetty’s husband.