Boucher won the MLC with MI New York, and MI Emirates have given him Robin Singh’s job a day before the auction
Robin Singh won the ILT20 in 2024 and reached last season’s final. MI Emirates have replaced him anyway, with Babar Azam the headline name at Thursday’s auction.
Sep 30, 2026
MI Emirates changed their head coach on Wednesday, 24 hours before the ILT20 auction. Mark Boucher takes over from Robin Singh, and his first job is the player auction in Dubai on Thursday.
The franchise gave no reason for Singh’s exit, and the timing is odd. Coaches usually shape an auction list for weeks. Boucher gets a day.
Singh’s record was hard to argue with
MI Emirates were hardly in crisis. Under Singh, MI Emirates won the ILT20 title in 2024 and reached the final again last season. That final, played at the Dubai International Stadium on 4 January 2026, went badly. Sam Curran made 74 not out from 51 balls as Desert Vipers posted 182 for 4, and MI Emirates were bowled out for 136. The Vipers won by 46 runs for their first title.
So Boucher inherits a side that has played in two of the last three finals. Anything short of the title will look like a step back, which may be why the Mumbai Indians group went for a coach it already knows.
Third MI job for Boucher
Indian fans will remember Boucher from the Mumbai Indians dugout. He coached MI in the IPL in 2023 and 2024. The first of those seasons took them to Qualifier 2, where Gujarat Titans knocked them out. The second was the Hardik Pandya captaincy season, and MI finished bottom of the table.
He then moved to MI New York in Major League Cricket and won the title there in 2025. Before any of the franchise work, he was South Africa’s head coach across all three formats from December 2019 to November 2022.
What Thursday looks like
More than 800 players registered and more than 200 made the shortlist, split into three base-price brackets of US$80,000, US$40,000 and US$10,000.
Babar Azam is the name that will get the most attention. He has registered for the ILT20 for the first time and sits in the top bracket. Phil Salt, Tom Banton, Rahmanullah Gurbaz, Wanindu Hasaranga, Faf du Plessis and Liam Livingstone are also in the pool.
Each franchise goes in with a US$1.3 million auction purse, plus whatever is left from its US$700,000 direct-signing allowance. The squad rules are tight: 11 players from ICC Full Members and a fixed quota of Afghanistan, UAE and Associate players. Getting those picks right could decide who has depth in December.
The fifth ILT20 season runs from late November to 20 December 2026, with games in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah.