SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — India great Ravichandran Ashwin signed a contract to play for the San Francisco Unicorns in Major League Cricket, the team announced Saturday.
Modeled on the hugely popular Indian Premier League, MLC is an annual Twenty20 tournament that launched three years ago in a bid to tap into the U.S. market.
The 39-year-old allrounder retired from international cricket in December 2024 after having played 106 tests for India, taking 537 wickets and hitting six test hundreds.
The Unicorns' announcement said Ashwin will become the first-ever India-capped player to compete in the league, a monthlong tournament that starts June 18.
A spinner, Ashwin made 65 appearances in T20 international matches.
In the IPL, he played for his hometown Chennai Super Kings and several other franchises.
“Signed for his world-class spin bowling and strong tactical acumen, Ashwin brings the Unicorns a significant leadership asset on and off the pitch, as well as being a household name set to thrill Major League Cricket and resonate strongly with the Bay Area’s large South Asian community, further strengthening the franchise’s connection to one of cricket’s most passionate fan bases,” the Unicorns said in their announcement.
Ashwin added: “My absolute focus is to help this franchise win games and push for its first championship, while also putting on a spectacular brand of cricket for the Bay Area fans.”
The league is comprised of six teams — the Unicorns, Los Angeles Knight Riders, Seattle Orcas, Texas Super Kings, MI New York and Washington Freedom. Games, however, are played in just three locations: Grand Prairie Stadium near Dallas; the Oakland Coliseum; and Knight Riders Cricket Field in Pomona, California.
Several of the MLC teams have IPL ownership links. There's interest in the other direction, too, as American investors are buying stakes in two IPL teams.
Cricket has been added to the Olympic program for the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
AP cricket: https://apnews.com/hub/cricket
FILE - India's Ravichandran Ashwin bowls a delivery on the fifth and final day of the second cricket test match between Bangladesh and India in Kanpur, India, on October 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Ajit Solanki, File)
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Organizers of Saturday's “No Kings” rallies across the country are predicting that the protests against the actions of President Donald Trump and his administration could add up to one of the largest demonstrations in U.S. history, with Minnesota taking center stage.
Organizers say more than 3,100 events have been registered in all 50 states, with more than 9 million people expected to participate.
And they’ve designated the rally at the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul as the national flagship event, in recognition of how the state where federal agents fatally shot two people who were monitoring Trump's immigration crackdown became an epicenter of resistance.
Headlining that observance will be Bruce Springsteen, performing “Streets of Minneapolis,” which he wrote in response to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and in tribute to the thousands of Minnesotans who took to the streets over the winter. Springsteen's Land of Hope & Dreams American Tour, which has a “No Kings” theme, kicks off Tuesday in Minneapolis.
Minnesota organizers have told state officials they expect 100,000 people could converge on the Capitol grounds, where last June’s event drew an estimated 80,000 people.
The St. Paul rally will also feature singer Joan Baez, actor Jane Fonda,Sen. Bernie Sanders and a long list of other activists, labor leaders and elected officials.
The White House dismissed the nationwide protests as the product of “leftist funding networks” with little real public support.
“The only people who care about these Trump Derangement Therapy Sessions are the reporters who are paid to cover them,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement.
Rallies are also planned in more than a dozen other countries, from Europe to Latin America to Australia, Ezra Levin, a co-executive director of Indivisible, a group spearheading the events, said in an interview. Countries with constitutional monarchies call the protests “No Tyrants,” he said.
For those unable to attend in person, another activist group, Stand Up For Science, is hosting a “virtual and accessible” event online.
On Saturday morning in Paris, several hundred people, mostly Americans living in France, along with French labor unions and human rights organizations, gathered at the Bastille.
“I protest all of Trump’s illegal, immoral, reckless, and feckless, endless wars,” Ada Shen, the Paris No Kings organizer, said. “It is clear he doesn’t really have a plan. It is clearly that the abuse of power is the point. It is very clear that he is a strong man who is abusing the authority vested in him by the American people as our elected president.”
In Rome, thousands of people marched with defiant chants aimed at Premier Giorgia Meloni, whose right-wing government saw its referendum for streamlining Italy's judiciary badly fail earlier this week amid criticism that it was a threat to the courts' independence. Protesters waved banners protesting the Israeli and US attacks on Iran, calling for “A world free from wars.”
U.S. organizers told reporters in an online news conference Thursday that they expect Saturday's protests to be larger than the first two rounds of No Kings rallies, which they estimate drew more than 5 million people in June and more than 7 million in October.
“This administration’s actions are angering not just Democratic voters or folks in big blue city centers — they are crossing a line for people in red and rural areas, in the suburbs, all over the country," said Leah Greenberg, the other co-executive director of Indivisible. "The defining story of this Saturday’s mobilization is not just how many people are protesting, but where they are protesting,"
Two-thirds of the RSVPs have come from outside of major urban centers, Greenberg said, listing registration surges in conservative-leaning states like Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Utah, South Dakota and Louisiana, as well in competitive suburban areas of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona.
"Millions of us are rising up from all walks of life, from rural communities to big cities at No Kings,” said Katie Bethell, executive director of MoveOn, another major organizer. “And as we do so, we will send the loudest, clearest message yet that this country does not belong to kings, dictators, tyrants. It belongs to us.”
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Associated Press videojournalist Nicholas Garriga in Paris and Associated Press reporter Colleen Berry in Milan, Italy, contributed to this report.
People take part in a national anti-war demonstration organized by "No Kings Italy movement" in Rome, Saturday, March 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
People take part in a national anti-war demonstration organized by "No Kings Italy movement" in Rome, Saturday, March 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
People take part in a national anti-war demonstration organized by "No Kings Italy movement" in Rome, Saturday, March 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
A woman holding a banner reading "No Kings, No War" takes part in the "No Kings" protest in Paris, France, Saturday, March 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
A woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty takes part in the "No Kings" protest in Paris, France, Saturday, March 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Aurelien Morissard)
FILE - Protesters stand off against California National Guard soldiers at the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles, during a "No Kings" protest, June 14, 2025. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
FILE - A person holds a sign reading "No Kings, No Oligarchs" as veterans and their supporters demonstrate outside Union Station Nov. 11, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
FILE - Thousands of protesters fill Times Square during a "No Kings" protest in New York, Oct. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Olga Fedorova, File)
FILE - Dee Cahill of Margate, Fla., holds a "No Kings" sign as she participates in a pro-democracy, anti-Trump protest outside Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., as part of the "Good Trouble Lives On" national day of action, July 17, 2025. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
FILE - Demonstrators march down Benjamin Franklin Parkway during the "No Kings" protest, June 14, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura, File)
