The Los Angeles Knight Riders have announced Sunil Narine as their captain for the first edition of US-based Major League Cricket, set to begin on Friday July 13th.

Sunil Narine will lead the LA Knight Riders (LAKR) in the MLC's inaugural season, which begins July 13 in the United States. Narine and his Kolkata Knight Riders teammate Andre Russell are among the big names in the Knight Riders franchise, which has also named Phil Simmons as their head coach at the MLC. LAKR will start the MLC against the Texas Super Kings at Grand Prairie Stadium.

Narine, who has been associated with the famed Knight Riders franchise through the Indian Premier League (IPL) for a decade, will oversee action for their Los Angeles-based American subsidiary during the six-team MLC.

Narine, who has also represented KKR for their respective Trinidad & Tobago and Abu Dhabi-based teams in leagues such as the Caribbean Premier League (CPL) and the newly launched International League T20 (ILT20), has played a total of 155 games in total for the leagues Franchise.

The LA based franchise also has other renowned international players in its ranks namely Adam Zampa, Martin Guptill and Rilee Rossouw.

Narine also struggled to lead KKR in the 2023 IPL season after Shreyas Iyer was sidelined through injury. Ultimately, however, the role went to Nitish Rana, who led the team to seventh place in the table.

The Caribbean star, who currently plays for Surrey in the Vitality T20 Blast, is expected to travel to the United States and begin preparations for the upcoming season. He recently hit an unbeaten 78 of 38 deliveries as he hit fifth in Sussex's last ball loss to Essex at The Oval.

Simmons will be joined by Bharat Arun as bowling coach, Ryan Ten Doeschate as assistant coach and AR Srikkanth as team analyst. Arun is also the bowling coach for KKR in the IPL.

Simmons brings extensive coaching experience from international cricket and T20 leagues around the world. He has twice served as head coach of West Indies teams (2015–16 and 2019–2022) and has also worked for Zimbabwe (2004–2005), Ireland (2007–2015) and Afghanistan (2017–19) teams.

At the T20 level, he was recently named coach of the Trinbago Knight Riders - the CPL's most successful team - and also won the title with the Barbados Royals (then Tridents) in 2019. He also led the Dubai Capitals to the playoffs in the first edition of ILT20 that year.