Google's Sundar Pichai Pitching For Cricket Team? Report

Sundar Pichai, Chief Executive Officer of Alphabet Inc is reportedly joining the Silicon Valley executives who are bidding for a London-based cricket team.

Reportedly, the consortium is putting in a bid of over £80 million ($97 million) for either Oval Invincibles or London Spirit. The teams play in The Hundred, which is a short-form tournament in England and Wales and it is attracting younger fans as well as more families.

This group is being led by Palo Alto Networks Inc. CEO Nikesh Arora and the Indian media tycoon Satyan Gajwani, vice-President of Times Internet Ltd. The group also includes Microsoft Corp CEO Satya Nadella, Adobe Inc Chief Shantanu Narayen, and Egon Durban, co-CEO of Silver Lake Management LLC as per a Bloomberg report.

Sundar Pichai is an avid fan of cricket which is a sport that originated in England but is losing out to India as the country is getting most of the money in the industry through lucrative contracts drawing some of the world's best players and the Indian premier League has attracted large TV audiences and big sponsors.

All the Indians in tech have already extended their support to cricket in the US, where Nadella and Narayen have invested in Major Cricket League.
 
To boost finances around cricket domestically, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has opened up a process in September to secure private investment into all eight teams of The Hundred.