Rahul Dravid, right, coached Ravichandran Ashwin in the India national team between 2021 and 2024. Legendary former India players Rahul Dravid and Ravichandran Ashwin are among the latest investors to acquire a franchise in the European T20 Premier League. BBC Sport understands the pair are part of an Indian consortium who have agreed a deal to buy the Glasgow-based franchise in the six-team tournament taking place this summer.

The ETPL are also poised to sell the second Dutch franchise - based in Rotterdam - to a group of South African investors fronted by ex-Proteas players Faf du Plessis, Heinrich Klaasen, and Jonty Rhodes. It is anticipated the two franchises will be officially announced at an event later this month. Those deals follow the sale of EPTL franchises in Amsterdam, Belfast, and Edinburgh to investors from Australia and New Zealand in January. The only ETPL city franchise yet to be sold is the one based out of Dublin, although BBC Sport has been told there has been interest from a variety of different parties, including owners of at least two teams in The Hundred.

Ashwin represented five franchises across his IPL career. Ashwin's involvement is an intriguing one and raises the tantalizing prospect of him playing in the ETPL in what would be a major coup for the organisers. The 39-year-old retired from international cricket in December 2024 and from the Indian Premier League last year and expressed a desire to broaden his horizons in global franchise leagues.

Ashwin had been due to be the first player capped by India at international level to play in the most recent edition of Australia's Big Bash League after he agreed a deal to play for Sydney Thunder. However, the spin-bowling all-rounder suffered a knee injury while training in Chennai last December and has been in rehabilitation since following surgery.

Ashwin played 106 Tests, 116 ODIs, and 65 T20s for India and took 765 wickets. Dravid's decision to align himself with a franchise based out of Glasgow taps into his historic connection with Scottish cricket. He played for Scotland as an overseas professional for a season in 2003 when they still participated in English county cricket limited-overs competitions.

Dravid played 11 games in the National Cricket League where he made 600 runs including three centuries. More recently, the 53-year-old former batter served as the head coach of the India men's cricket team from November 2021 to June 2024. Dravid played 164 Tests and 344 one-day internationals for India, scoring nearly 25,000 runs across formats including 48 centuries.

The ETPL is being run in collaboration with the cricket boards of Ireland, Scotland, and the Netherlands. Bollywood actor and film producer Abhishek Bachchan is a part-owner of the league in conjunction with Rules Sport Tech, a private Indian company. As reported by BBC Sport earlier this year, the franchises have been sold for £11.1m ($15m) over a 10-year period. Teams will have a total salary budget in the region of £1.1m ($1.5m) per season, with the inaugural tournament taking place from 26 August to 20 September.

The ETPL is set to clash with England's Test series against Pakistan, which rules out multi-format players such as Harry Brook, Jacob Bethell, and Jofra Archer. But with the 2026 edition of The Hundred scheduled to run from late July to mid-August, any England players with white-ball contracts would, in theory, be available to participate. England begin a T20 series against Sri Lanka on 15 September. Any centrally-contracted England players who wish to take part would require a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) from the England and Wales Cricket Board. County-contracted players just on white-ball deals would be free to play with an NOC given there is no clash with The Hundred or The Blast.

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