Hailed as a cricket equivalent of the UEFA Champions League, the eagerly-awaited European Cricket League will be launched this European summer. Spain’s prestigious La Manga Club will play as the venue for the newest cricket league on the horizon.

European Cricket League trophies unveiled!

Hailed as a cricket equivalent of the UEFA Champions League, the eagerly-awaited European Cricket League will be launched this European summer. Spain’s prestigious La Manga Club will play as the venue for the newest cricket league on the horizon.

The inaugural edition of the ECL will take place from July 29-31, at the La Manga Club, south-east Spain. The tournament will consist of 17 matches played in a T10 format and will feature the 2018 champion clubs of France, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Romania, Russia, Spain, and the Netherlands for the chance to be crowned as cricket’s ‘Kings of Europe’.

The trophies for the Winning Team and Player of the Tournament was recently unveiled in a glitzy event where the creator of the silverware, Sanjay Sharma, Head Designer at Loka Lifestyle, opened up on a variety of topics. Sharma, who has 15 years of experience in making trophies for various events revealed his motivation behind trophy making.

Winners Trophy

“Over the last 15 years I have made trophies for various sports; Golf, Cricket, Hockey, Football, Judo, Table Tennis, Tennis, Marathons, lifestyle awards. My clients include International Cricket Council, International Hockey Federation [FIH], Hockey India, Hockey India League, Indian Olympic Association, Indian Super League, Mumbai Indians [IPL], Delhi Capitals [IPL], Mercedes, Indian state governments & ministries, Sportif Judo [Scotland], Edinburg Marathon, Indian Media houses NDTV, Network 18 corporates such as Reliance, Usha, Piramal to name a few”, said Sanjay Sharma

Sanjay, as an amateur Golfer was winning trophies and felt that they did not do justice to the hard work he had put in.

“They were all “off the rack” objects of no particular design which for me was always a huge disappointment, so I threw away most of them”

It was during his stint at Swarovski that Sanjay won some corporate Golf trophies, and with them lacking the panache, it was then that he decided that he needed to change how trophies can be or should be designed, combining metal and crystals to bespoke design.

My love for trophies is simply my passion for sports and the exhilarating sensation of winning with a trophy and gripping it in my hands. Each design when manufactured gives me that feeling, I imagine myself winning the trophy and holding it aloft for all to see. For that reason, every time I make a trophy, to me it has to be the best trophy ever.

In the words of Sanjay, for a trophy to look great, it must be alive and have a soul of its own.

Player of the Tournament Trophy

Player of the Tournament Trophy

“A trophy gets this soul when the design includes the passion of the players it is for, the vision of people and the organization behind the commission and then the passionate viewers who want to see something they can be in awe of and associate with the event they are watching”

Sanjay, who played cricket in Munich, Germany, from 1999 to 2000 with the Munich Cricket Club, before moving to India, also opened up on his inspiration behind designing the ECL trophy. After recently moving back to Munich, Sharma came in contact with Daniel Weston on Linkedin as he was seeking someone to design the ECL trophies.

While opening up behind his inspiration of designing the ECL trophy, Sanjay reckoned, “The ECL logo has a crown in it and the founder of ECL, Daniel Weston has this vision of Crowning the champions of European cricket. The passion with which this vision of crowning was stated again and again caught my imagination. Thus I designed a trophy, which has a crown that can in fact be removed and placed on the winning teams captains head”

“It is the design that will make its mark with all the viewers and will be identified with the ECL whenever seen or shown,” reckons a confident Sanjay, and we couldn’t be more excited for the tournament to get underway as it marks the beginning of a new era in European cricket.