In July 2024, Pakistan fast bowler Zaman Khan landed at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport for his maiden stint with Seattle Orcas in Major League Cricket. What should have been a joyous first visit to the United States quickly turned into an ordeal he is unlikely to forget.

Travelling alone and unfamiliar with both the country and the language, Khan cleared immigration and attempted to contact Jagan Nemani, then Seattle Orcas' Vice President of Operations, for details regarding his airport pick-up. Nemani, however, was in the middle of a meeting and missed the first few calls. Growing increasingly anxious after repeated attempts went unanswered, Khan walked out of the arrivals terminal without even collecting his luggage.

By the time Nemani finally returned the call, he was able to connect Khan with the driver, who had been waiting patiently in the arrivals area holding a placard with his name.

The episode was hardly an isolated incident. Throughout the first three seasons of MLC, Nemani and his skeletal operations staff found themselves consumed by an endless stream of logistical firefighting. Questions surrounding airport pickups and departures, availability of team vehicles, hotel check-ins, daily per diem allocations, travel itineraries and schedule changes occupied nearly 80 percent of their working hours, often stretching into ten-hour days for a travelling contingent of more than 40 players and support staff.

Unlike the cash-rich IPL franchises that can deploy large support staffs to handle such tasks, MLC teams operate on tighter budgets with significantly leaner operations units. Yet for an organisation backed by some of the technology industry's foremost innovators, and for someone like Nemani whose professional life had revolved around building elegant technology solutions, being trapped in a cycle of administrative chores came as something of a culture shock.

Neither the Orcas ownership group nor Nemani had any intention of accepting such "duct-tape operations" as the norm.

Necessity, as it often does, became the mother of invention. Out of that necessity was born Yorka, Seattle Orcas' homegrown AI assistant. What began as a solution to operational headaches has evolved into what is believed to be cricket's first fully integrated AI agent ecosystem. A multi-agent system capable of handling nearly 80 percent of the operational workload involved in running a professional sports franchise.

Flight bookings, hotel reservations, ground transportation, per diem processing, event scheduling, reminders, physiotherapy appointments and player logistics are now largely orchestrated by Yorka.

"We call our AI agent Yorka, which also happens to be our mascot," says Nemani, now the franchise's Chief Product Officer.

"So what happens is the AI agent knows exactly when a cricketer is flying from which airport to which airport. It tracks the flight and before the cricketer lands, it checks the transportation reservations to see if a driver's details have been assigned. If they haven't, it automatically reaches out to the transportation company, obtains the information, updates our records and shares the details with the team manager.

"So as soon as the cricketer lands, he receives a WhatsApp message saying, 'Welcome to this city. Your driver's name is this, his number is this, you're arriving at this terminal, your baggage claim is on this belt and you're staying at this hotel.'"

What makes Yorka particularly intriguing is that it manages the entire player lifecycle. From the moment a player is signed until the day he leaves the tournament.

A simple workflow begins when the franchise's travel agent uploads a player's ticket into a shared folder. Yorka reads the itinerary, calculates the player's duration with the squad, books hotel rooms, arranges transportation for inbound and outbound journeys, calculates per diem payments and automatically emails the franchise CFO with payment details. Simultaneously, it alerts the merchandise manager about the player's clothing sizes and flags any additional kit requirements.

"Its your constant companion," Nemani says enthusiastically. "Every morning at 6:30, it tells you what your next 48 hours look like. It knows if you have a customer event, a marketing commitment, a photo shoot or a recovery session. One hour before every event, it reminds you.

"Imagine the calls I used to get for these things. A resounding zero now."

The childlike enthusiasm in Nemani's voice is impossible to miss. He might also be the first Chief Product Officer employed by a pure cricketing entity.

Before joining the Orcas, Nemani served as Head of Innovation at Vertafore, where he helped develop products that blazed a trail in the insurance industry. Given both his background and the technology pedigree of Seattle's ownership group, it was perhaps inevitable that innovation would eventually find its way into their cricket operations.

"We have a lot of technology founders among our owners," explains Nemani. "In technology businesses, the Chief Product Officer is an incredibly important role because that person owns the entire customer experience and everything feeding in and out of it such as sales, marketing, finance, everything.

"Our founders felt the same philosophy should apply to a cricket team because our product is our team. There needs to be one person looking after everything surrounding that product and the experiences it provides to players, staff, sponsors and fans."

For Orcas, the true value of Yorka lies not merely in automation, but in time reclaimed. The hours once consumed by operational firefighting are now being channelled into strengthening the player and staff experience which is a natural extension of the culture first philosophy that has defined the Orcas since their inception.

And perhaps the dividends of that culture are already visible. Former New Zealand captain Ross Taylor, who has been associated with the Orcas in various capacities since the inaugural season, offered a small but telling glimpse this year. Fresh off a gruelling 30-hour journey from Auckland to Dallas, including a six-hour delay in San Francisco, Taylor headed straight from the airport to an Orcas game where around 20 sponsor representatives were waiting to meet him.

For nearly an hour, Taylor was swarmed by sponsors and bombarded with questions. Yet he answered each one with the same warmth and enthusiasm as the first, patiently shaking every hand before finally departing.

That, ultimately, is where Yorka's significance truly lies. The technology may handle flights, hotels, transportation and reminders, but its real value lies in freeing humans to do the more human things, devoting more of themselves to the relationships, interactions and moments that truly define a sports franchise.

"The Seattle Orcas have shown what's possible. Their AI agents now run 80% of day-to-day operations - travel, scheduling, logistics so people can focus on culture and performance. With team backers like Satya Nadella and Shantanu Narayen, and league partners like Cognizant and VTEX, MLC isn't just growing the game in the USA we're building the most technologically advanced T20 league in the world." Johnny Grave, CEO, Major League Cricket.

After about 1,200 features and 80,000 lines of code, Nemani's phone is quieter, but the franchise runs more seamlessly than ever.