All six ETPL franchises went into the inaugural ETPL Player Draft with multiple strategies and perhaps more back-up strategies. Focussing and targeting local, home-grown talent was the common denominator — a belief that a team drawn deep from a single well of local knowledge would prove harder to unsettle than one assembled from scattered parts. It wasn’t a surprise then to see the Glasgow Cosmic franchise pick as many as five Scotland internationals alongside a Dutch mainstay, amongst their six draft picks. A strong domestic core speaks to the very reason the ETPL exists: to let the players who know these conditions best set the tone.
Here is a closer look at the Glasgow Cosmic’s smashing six:
BRAD CURRIE (Scotland)
There are few better stories in Associate cricket than that of Brad Currie. A left-arm swing bowler who admits he had "more second XI trials than hot dinners," Currie ground through National Counties cricket for Dorset before Sussex handed him a first-class debut at Lord's in 2022 — where he promptly took a six-wicket haul. In a game obsessed with express pace, his gentle, wobbling swing is a genuine point of difference, one that has yielded 28 T20I wickets at just over twelve apiece, with best figures of 5 for 13 against Ireland. He is also one of the finest fielders in the competition: his diving boundary catch in the 2023 T20 Blast was described by Ben Stokes as "filth" and has been watched more than thirteen million times on social media.
MATTHEW CROSS (Scotland)
If the Cosmic team needed a ‘spine’ for their outfit, they found it in Matthew Cross. The Aberdeen-born wicketkeeper is one of the most experienced cricketers in the draft, with more than 175 international caps and over 3,000 runs, and is widely regarded as the finest pure gloveman of his generation in Associate cricket. He made history as the first Scot to score a T20I century, and his twin hundreds against the UAE in 2018 revealed a batting game that can anchor and accelerate alike. A footballer for Aberdeen FC at under-15 level in his youth, Cross brings leadership, calm and a safe pair of hands.
PAUL VAN MEEKEREN (Netherlands)
The lone overseas pick for the Glasgow franchise was Paul van Meekeren - proof that cricketing dreams rarely travel in straight lines. As recently as 2020, with the pandemic having frozen the game, the Dutch quick was delivering food for Uber Eats through the cold Netherlands winter — famously tweeting that he "should've been playing cricket." Three years later, he was tearing through South Africa at a fifty-over World Cup. He announced himself on debut by dismissing the great Hashim Amla and produced a match-winning 4 for 11 against Ireland at the 2016 World T20. Hardened by county spells at Somerset, Durham and Gloucestershire, he knows what it takes to topple even a Test nation.
MICHAEL LEASK (Scotland)
Some cricketers accumulate; Michael Leask detonates. The Aberdeen all-rounder is one of the cleanest strikers in the European game, a reputation forged in 2014, when he smashed 42 from just 16 balls against England, five of them soaring over the rope. For some time, he held the fifth-highest strike rate in ODI history among batters with a thousand runs — behind only Andre Russell, Glenn Maxwell, Jos Buttler and Shahid Afridi — and he remains the only Scot to complete the ODI double of 1,000 runs and 50 wickets. His unbeaten 91 to nearly steal an almost unwinnable chase against Ireland at the 2023 World Cup Qualifier summed him up: fearless, inventive, and capable of turning a match on its head.
OLIVER DAVIDSON (Scotland)
In Oliver Davidson, the Cosmic franchise has secured one of the brightest young talents in Scottish cricket. A left-handed batter and slow left-arm orthodox bowler still in his early twenties, Davidson caught the eye as a Worcestershire academy player, taking 14 wickets at the Under-19 World Cup European qualifiers before featuring at the 2026 T20 World Cup. His recent form — striking at nearly 190 across his latest T20 campaign — points to a fearless competitor coming into his own, and a genuine two-way option built for the future.
CHRIS McBRIDE (Scotland)
Completing the Scottish quintet is Chris McBride, a composed top-order batter who adds ballast and intelligence to the line-up. Born in Dumfries and schooled across the border in Carlisle, he combined his early cricket with an economics degree at Oxford Brookes before establishing himself in Scotland's ODI side, where he has passed fifty against opposition as strong as Ireland. A right-hander who also bowls tidy medium pace, McBride was part of the Scotland squad that lifted the ICC Cricket World Cup League 2 title — a winner who knows how to build an innings and absorb pressure at the top.
Taken together, the Glasgow Cosmic's six selections read like a considered thesis in covering all cricket bases, rather than a shopping list: explosive hitting in Leask, control and charisma in Currie, experience in Cross, big-game nerves in van Meekeren, promise in Davidson and reliability in McBride. Don’t miss the shared language — a core of players who have spent their careers mastering the very conditions the ETPL will be played in. Glasgow have bet on the power of local knowledge, and on the evidence of draft day, it looks a shrewd wager indeed.
