Actor, sports entrepreneur and European T20 Premier League co founder Abhishek Bachchan has marked the opening day of ETPL 2026 with a post from the ground, standing beside the league trophy and captioning it simply: “Here we go! European T20 League.”
The image and message together capture a shift that has been months in the making. What began as an idea to take professional T20 cricket into Europe is now a live tournament. Today is Match 1 of the inaugural season.
Today’s fixture
Wednesday, 26 August 2026
Rotterdam Dockers vs Amsterdam Flames
Venue: Voorburg
Time: 18:45 IST (15:15 local)
The opening game is the first of a cluster of matches being staged in Voorburg this week, setting the tone for a league built across Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands.
Bachchan co founded and co owns the ETPL with Saurav Banerjee, Priyanka Kaul and Dhiraj Malhotra, partners at Rules Global. The league is a joint venture between Cricket Ireland and Rules Global (Rules X), and is being developed in partnership with Cricket Ireland, Cricket Scotland and the Royal Dutch Cricket Association.
For Bachchan, the moment is consistent with the position he has taken on sports ownership: not as a vanity association, but as institution building. After years of work across kabaddi and football in India, ETPL is his most ambitious cricket play yet, aimed at creating a professional T20 club competition in a market that did not have one.
His Instagram post keeps it simple. The trophy is on the field, the first fixture is locked, and the league is finally under way.
Official post:
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