Bay Area’s newest sports superstar has hidden motive for coming to US

SANTA CLARA — Ravi Ashwin is an ecosystem unto himself.

The San Francisco Unicorns’ new star signing attracted a crowd – and at times, a desperate and aggressive group of autograph seekers – everywhere he walked at the Bay Area cricket team’s Family Day hosted at Wilcox High, proving what cricket fans already know.

He’s a big deal.

Ashwin, 39, comes across as humble in person, but that belies his fame and standing in the sport. He is the first Major League Cricket player who has appeared internationally for India, widely considered the gold standard worldwide.

He is one of the best bowlers of all time, an off-spin savant who has defined his own style, mixing analytical thinking with overwhelming skill.

He also bats, and is particularly accomplished in Test cricket, where he has taken more than 500 wickets and was the fastest bowler to reach 300.

Ashwin helped lead India to the 2011 World Cup and is one of three cricketers to have scored 3,000 runs and taken 500 runs in Test matches. He has won a record 11 Man of the Series awards in Tests.

While other Unicorns players milled about on the turf football field at the Santa Clara school, teaching young children about the game with plastic balls and wickets, Ashwin was inundated with autograph requests. He couldn’t get away to play along or find a moment of peace.

Part of the reason Ashwin wanted to join the Unicorns stems from his embrace of analytics. On a stage in front of hundreds of cricket fans hanging on his every word and in a sit-down interview with the Bay Area News Group, Ashwin mentioned the region’s technological brilliance as a key selling point.

“I’m quite excited to go around and see some of the inception of some of these great startups,” Ashwin told this news organization. “Stanford University is something that I would definitely like to visit. I heard there is a garage where they have a generation of computers as well, so I look forward to seeing all of them.

“It’s a hub of innovation. And as we are standing at this point of time in the world, where we are talking about AI automation and stuff, I’m pretty excited to go around and see what is there.”

Ashwin’s first trip to the Bay Area won’t be only about exploring the pleasure of business, of course. There’s on-field business to attend to as well, starting with the Unicorns’ match against the Texas Super Kings on Wednesday at the Oakland Coliseum.

Major League Cricket just opened its fourth season, and this is the second year that the single-entity league will play some of its games in Oakland.

Last year, MLC held its opening week at the Coliseum for the first time, tapping into cricket supporters in the Bay Area, many of whom have immigrated to the United States from countries that fully embrace the sport.

India leads the way population-wise, but other South Asian countries, as well as Great Britain and Commonwealth countries like Australia and New Zealand, are also cricket hotbeds.

Ashwin highlighted the Indian community in the Bay Area as another reason he was passionate about what MLC and the Unicorns are doing to try to grow the sport locally.

“It’s my first time in the Bay Area, and it was quite amazing, the kind of Indian diaspora that turned up,” he said. “It was something. I expected some people to turn up, but that was quite surprising. It’s quite a lot.”

MLC saw small crowds last year compared to the capacity of the Coliseum, but that could potentially improve given the higher-stakes matchups being played this year.

The 2026 MLC season already began with a handful of games in Texas last week, as the Unicorns beat the Super Kings and lost to the LA Knight Riders.

It continues with games spanning June 24-28 in Oakland, then a trip south to the Fairplex in Pomona July 1-5 and then back to Texas from July 8-12 to wrap up what is essentially the group stage of the tournament.

But unlike in past years, when the championship was contested at purpose-built Grand Prairie Cricket Stadium in Dallas, the knockout rounds and championship match will be held back at the Coliseum from July 15-18.

For Ashwin, coming to America to witness the franchise model – which is different from international cricket – and take part was too tempting to pass up.

Ashwin clearly has a different way of looking at the sport than some of his contemporaries. He once traveled to the Driveline Baseball training facility in Seattle, which he credited with reviving his career and enabling him to make the India T20 team after he experienced a dropoff.

“The game is at a crux where it is kind of changing, and it’s kind of moving on to the other side,” he said. “And for me, yes, one part of it is playing, but more than anything else, I want to understand the ecosystem of franchise cricket.

“The future of the sport in itself is going to be franchise-based. And the more I get to visit and understand the ecosystem and how players are going about it, it’ll enable me to jump on to the next version of my career, which could well be coaching, or me supporting the players and building good teams.”

For Sanjay Krishnamurthi, a returning Unicorns player who studied computer science at San Jose State, Ashwin’s signing provides a new level of legitimacy to what Major League Cricket is trying to accomplish in the States.

“It’s really special,” Krishnamurthi said. “Legend of the game, someone who’s done so much, and for him to come here towards the end of his career, bringing his wealth of experience with him, it’s a great learning opportunity for all of us to see how he thinks about the game, because he’s one of the most stout thinkers of the game.

“He’s a voice now in the cricketing world who talks a lot about the game, and he’s a great thinker. He’s opened up certain trains of thought that people may not have used before. So it’s been really special so far, and I hope to learn as much as I can off of him all season.”