America hopes to welcome the world's best cricket stars to a new six-team Major Cricket League which has funding of £100million from private investors including tech giants Microsoft and Adobe.
The move is set to rival England's T20 Blast series next summer with teams based in Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC.
World Cup winner and former England player Liam Plunkett left domestic side Surrey last year and moved to America with his wife Emeleah after signing a three-year deal to play and coach the next generation of cricketers for the Philadelphians, as the country looks to grow the game.
Plunket expects the new series to 'explode', he told the Daily Mail : "It’s go big or go home That is how they do stuff in America. And with the money that is behind this, it is going to be massive. I think it will explode.
"Americans want to watch the best and I think we can attract them. I think they will definitely jump on board when they see how big it is.
"With how many people love cricket here and the way Americans put on a show, you will get packed-out crowds. Hopefully you will get people like Jonny Bairstow, Andre Russell, all of these guys coming across to play. It is a lot of people’s dream to play sport in America."
Co-founder Sameer Mehta says the new league will offer salaries to rival other domestic competitions outside the IPL.
He told the Daily Mail: "We are quite hopeful that the best cricketers in the world will come and we will have very decent salary caps. I expect this to be very attractive and the US is also an attractive destination.
"June and July are the months we will be focusing on and we are lucky to not have too many clashes with international cricket or league cricket outside of England."
Mehta previously launched Willow TV, a subscription sports channel airing overseas cricket matches to fans in America. He added: "From our broadcasting days, we know there are probably about 8million people in the US who know about cricket, about 4m fans who will bother to watch a cricket game and about 1.2m to 1.5m households that will actually pay good dollars for a cricket game."
In a previous attempt to bring the world's top cricket stars to America seven years Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar captained teams of retired legends in an exhibition series which matches held at baseball stadiums. However, the new cricket league will be held in purpose built cricket grounds meeting ICC requirements.
Grand Prairie in Dallas County will be the first to open next year with plans for all six franchise teams to have their own homes by 2025.
