A couple of weeks ago, the ice maker on my fridge stopped working. Last week, the gutter on the front of my house got clogged and overflowed onto the front porch, Yesterday, I found a hole in the ground-level siding leading under my back porch, something that was clearly created by a living creature acting with force to create the opening. It would not be the first I have seen of a groundhog around this property, although our relationship has quickly escalated to one akin to Bill Murray and his dancing gopher nemesis in "Caddyshack."
I've often heard variants of the phrase "bad things come in threes," and home ownership is perhaps the single most powerful thing sustaining that idea for America's rump middle class. This is not the first time this sequencing has happened, and it will not be the last in what I hope will be 30-odd years of owning this temperamental flip and methodically milling through every issue my wife and I find with it. American cricket has taken multiple hits in a similar span of time.
First is the on-field product. Long the saving grace and wallpaper of American cricket's dysfunction, the US men's team has limped through its tri-series against Nepal and Scotland in Nepal, where the hosts were already in a groove and suddenly look a lot less hopeless than they did at the turn of the calendar year. Nepal thrashed the US with 13 overs to spare on Friday behind a masterful 120*(118) from Kushal Bhurtel, keeping the Americans down after a narrow loss to Scotland on DLS where Saiteja Mukkamalla both gave and took over the course of a robust innings. A bowling attack that relies heavily on spin to keep the run rate down has faltered, sometimes dramatically; not including part-timers, American spinners are a shocking 3/342 at TU Cricket Ground over the last week. The bats have fared little better, with Monank Patel missing the first matchup with Nepal due to injury and only acting captain Mukkamalla, Shehan Jayasuriya, and Smit Patel (twice) scoring north of 30 runs on what has ostensibly been a batting-friendly surface for several weeks now in Kirtipur. It's not the end of the universe - they have fallen two points behind Scotland with five games in hand - but it's the first time they've lost consecutive ODIs since 2023. Their fielding in the first two games was poor, as was their communication and body language in general.
The good news is, that funk may already be subsiding: the USA beat Scotland by six wickets with a whopping 137 balls to spare on Wednesday. Switching out Mohammad Mohsin for Rushil Ugarkar yielded wickets despite also yielding quite a few runs at times, but Ugarkar's 4/48 paired nicely with Saurabh Netravalkar's 3/19 to bowl Scotland out for 169 on a day where the ball was swinging quite a bit under intense cloud cover. They made the bold decision to bowl Netravalkar for as long as he could take (which ended up being seven overs) to maximize the conditions and possibly in part because they thought the match would be rain-affected and wanted to keep the ball in a hot hand.
The win is a huge deal for a few reasons. For one, it ensures the USA will be level on points with Scotland leaving Nepal regardless of the result tomorrow morning... and the US men have five games in hand. The USA's magic number to clinch the top spot is currently 14 to fend off the Netherlands, but they can ensure they finish ahead of Scotland with nine points, and they are six points from clinching qualification, which they can reduce to four by beating Canada on June 6. Their own final home series of the cycle, which was supposed to be in May, has been reportedly moved to October. That's unfortunate, but it also opens the door for creative opportunities - like playing the games in Los Angeles at the venue Major League Cricket will open in a month.
Of course, nobody will see that stuff anywhere. I found out the USA/Namibia/UAE tri-series got moved to October on Wikipedia. Most of us found out about the Canada game dates - which are LESS THAN THREE WEEKS AWAY - because a TV contractor leaked it. It's making the rounds, but as of this writing has yet to be announced by anyone official. The boards hosting these events have made no attempts to advertise or announce dates for games, for which they have drawn hefty criticism from the usual void-screamers.
Criticism of those boards is warranted here, but I think it's incomplete. Too many people are willing to heap scorn on the boards and ignore the ICC's role in failing to communicate when it's second-most important ongoing tournament (behind the World Test Championship) is actually being played. For all intents and purposes, there is no USA Cricket. It exists only on paper with no full-time office employees after CEO Johnathan Atkeison's employment agreement was rejected by the trustee in a court-granted motion last week. USA Cricket has not posted on Instagram in 10 weeks as of this writing because there is no one on the payroll to do it: no full-time staff, no contractors, nobody. Criticizing USA Cricket over its media relations is not even flogging a dead horse - there’s no horse to flog.
This is an ICC event. The ICC is responsible for the format, matchups, and most pertinent of all, the schedule. They have put forth zero information about subsequent schedule changes; no press releases, no social graphics, no nothing. We found out 18 days before the first game that Nepal was hosting the UAE and Oman on April 25 after that series had been postponed. That threw all the scheduling for a loop, but the ICC has been radio silent about subsequent changes. The ICC has repeatedly and profoundly failed its junior members going back to well before Jay Shah came to power, so this is nothing new, but they have escaped criticism for their complete lack of a media relations strategy beyond "push out some graphics for socials every few weeks." There are Division II tennis teams with better media strategies than the ICC. It has created a logistical mess for all but about six people who are in the know on these things, and the likelihood that any of them are actually based in the United States is quite low. It's embarrassing. That's nothing new, either.
Speaking of embarrassments, I wonder if Judge Michael Romero is sitting in his chambers today thinking, "what kind of bonkers can of worms have I opened in my own courtroom?"
USA Cricket's bankruptcy is being dragged on and on as the Venu Crew does what I suspected it would do, gum up the works for as long as it could with little real hope of winning but enough spite to power a small country. Pisike - who is technically still the Chairman of the Board of Directors but has no functional power - has flooded the zone with objections to basically everything over the last six weeks, while Srini Salver and Anj Balusu have joined him in objecting to the trustee's settlement with ACE regarding the Crew's attempted termination of the ACE agreement that set off this whole circus late last summer. Arun Agrawal has gotten involved through the National Cricket League, offering financing for USA Cricket that surpasses what ACE has offered in post-petition financing in the short term as well as a pot of legal fees to help fight what would inevitably be a new fusillade of lawsuits from ACE, including one centered on a $150 million "proof of claim" that feels less like an attempt to recover damages from the bankruptcy and more like a threat… especially considering the settlement makes it go away entirely.
The settlement has far-reaching implications for American cricket. It's an attempt to bury a lot of the acrimony that has plagued the relationship between USA Cricket and ACE almost since that relationship started. ACE commits to a sum of post-petition financing that totals out in the low seven figures while reinstating the existing terms sheet Pisike and his allies terminated and committing to negotiating a new one that clarifies some of the rather significant loopholes in the language of the existing, shorter term sheet that became binding in the absence of a long-form agreement that has guardrails on it from the ICC. It's an imperfect arrangement in an imperfect circumstance, but that fresh start is so tantalizing to people beleaguered by years of this squabbling that it’s hard not to see a win and possibly an end in sight for all this nonsense. It's an existential threat for Agrawal's NCL project, however, and it doesn't align itself with Pisike's Main Character Syndrome, so it's time for more courtrooms.
On Monday, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado heard arguments surrounding objections to the settlement. The principal reason this was done is to stress test USAC trustee Mark Dennis' business judgment in brokering the proposed settlement with ACE. The proof of claim is a threat, and potentially a serious one, but how much due diligence did Dennis do on that claim's enforceability, and how much does that due diligence or lack thereof inform his perspective on the settlement?
Had the hearing stuck to that, it might have even finished on time. Instead, ACE got put on trial with the same grudges, accusations, and tactics we've come to know and... well, know.
While cross examination of Dennis and ACE CEO Johnny Grave started in a good place, it was derailed multiple times by parties adjacent to the now-powerless USA Cricket board. A large portion of the hearing on Monday was an attempt to establish ACE as being in breach of the existing terms sheet instead of staying on message about whether Dennis applied due diligence. Romero blocked several lines of questioning relating to potential ACE breaches; the NCL was accused of turning proceedings into a bidding war, and an ICC attorney showed up after the ICC had previously claimed they took no stance on the settlement to fly off the top rope at USA Cricket’s BoD. Even with the alternative solutions presented by the NCL and USPL, Dennis does not seem to think USA Cricket could survive a protracted legal battle with ACE over the merits of the various grievances at play, and depending on another party to step in and bankroll those disputes for them makes USA Cricket less resilient, not more. There's a good summary of proceedings at CricExec, but the gist of it is this: ACE has the leverage and everyone else is throwing stuff at the wall to see if it sticks.
Is that, in the long run, a good thing for American cricket? I would love to say it is, but I am unconvinced that ACE will work to grow the game with people who don’t already watch the IPL in the middle of the day at work when even reaching those people requires it to incur losses. What I am convinced of is that ACE is the most serious player at the table right now, and that the NCL's (and USPL's) best hope here is likely a buyout or M&A, similar to the AFL, WHA, or ABA of yesteryear. It may end up being the best outcome for everyone. It's more likely, though, that these relationships are so soured by what has gone on over the last 24 months that such a face-saving lifeline is unavailable to get people out of this. For now, the governance of American cricket remains less Circus Maximus and more Iocus Maximus, and it seems it will be that way for a while yet.
Shaky results, bad media relations, and unserious legal proceedings. Bad things happen in threes.
Bad things can also happen in sevens... let's not go there, not least of all because I don't need any holes in my roof.