Is USA Cricket Salvageable?

After Venu Pisike walked away from Singapore with a three month reprieve and Jonathan Atkeison walked away with a bunch of photos where he looked like he would rather be anywhere else, a report came out last week in The Hindu’s sports vertical, Sportstar, listing a boatload of USAC grievances against its largest partner, American Cricket Enterprises (ACE), operators of MLC, MiLC, and commercial rights holders for US National Team home games. The grievances range from the hilarious - like being up in arms about a Toronto team that doesn’t exist yet - to more valid concerns like an alleged $1.25 million in unpaid player and staff wages under the term sheet, which ACE disputes but should be pretty easy to verify with a paper trail.

If the goal of USAC is to get more money out of ACE or otherwise get ACE to arbitration over terms of the agreement, these grievances have a modest chance of success even as USAC’s leverage is being eroded by ICC and USOPC scrutiny. But after Pisike reportedly tried to rally the USAC Board of Directors to terminate the ACE contract earlier in July, it seems like USA Cricket’s chairman wants out of the agreement all together.

In that case, none of what is detailed in Sportstar is a “smoking gun” to give USAC grounds to get out of the deal or get it voided in court. Even their best (or at least most interesting) bet, pinning former chairman Paraag Marathe for being party to the deal in bad faith because of a Times Online consulting contract pertaining to growing cricket in the United States, isn’t concrete as-published. All we get from Sportstar reporting on this front is a milquetoast email from USAC counsel on the matter in 2021:

The piece very notably does not mention whether Marathe followed through on this advice and recused himself or was excused by then-CEO Iain Higgins, or if this advice was ignored or if the issue was discovered too late for it to matter. All of that is critical information, because “our old leadership signed a bad deal” and “we think our old leadership was double-dealing/conspiring to screw us” are two radically different things. Only one of them is a compelling reason to consult lawyers.

Much gets made in Sportstar and elsewhere of the ACE deal being a potential impediment to USAC’s compliance with the Ted Stevens Act of 1998 and the Amateur Sports Act of 1978 which the former amends. These laws govern the rules under which the USOPC operates, the criteria by which it certifies National Governing Bodies (NGBs) for Olympic sports, and the basic responsibilities of those NGBs. The pertinent criteria is autonomy, which requires a potential NGB to be “autonomous in the governance of its sport, in that it independently determines and controls all matters central to such governance, does not delegate such determination and control, and is free from outside restraint, and demonstrates that it is a member of no more than one international sports federation which governs a sport included on the program of the Olympic Games or the Pan-American Games.”

I’ve said before that everything USAC has outsourced to ACE makes it feel like a de facto governing body, but commercial rights and infrastructure development aren’t really what the respective Acts are aimed at. USAC still holds elections (allegedly), registers players and leagues, certifies coaches and umpires, selects the national teams, and establishes the policies relevant to those activities or perpetuates ICC policies for the same. It is the only body in the country that does those things or has the authority to do them. That’s the sort of governing autonomy the USOPC is concerned about when it applies those standards, so I don’t think the ACE contract is a serious road block. The bigger concern would be USAC’s ability to do those things well.

But let’s play ball. Purely for the sake of argument, I’ll say the ACE deal as-is creates an additional barrier preventing USA Cricket from being granted NGB status under federal law, and that potential exits from the deal are sufficiently limited as to be impractical. A new board can’t resolve that issue in anything resembling a timely manner, and the current board isn’t viable.

The most efficient scenario for stabilizing American cricket governance at that point - and dare I say the most likely - is letting USA Cricket die. The ACE agreement goes poof, the current board is removed, and the USOPC and ICC start over.

That’s obviously an extreme measure, but put yourself in the USOPC’s position: you want an NGB in place for cricket in 2026 to start the preparations for the 2027 Pan American Games in Peru and 2028 Olympics in LA. Your options are to either spend the next four months wading through a huge mess of non-compliant contracts and self-perpetuating infighting by a board that has been farting around for over a year while you repeatedly tell them to get their act together via a CEO who must be getting tired of all this by now, or use your considerable resources to spin up an organization that will be 100% compliant with federal law from the jump. What are you going to do?

Sigh.

To be honest, I don’t think that’s the worst idea even if the ACE contract isn’t an issue. It offers the best chance to pull American cricket governance out of the shady niche it has lived in for its entire history and frees ACE from the more eccentric parts of its agreement, letting them run a for-profit cricket enterprise that looks more like other major US sports leagues. Whatever lenience the ICC is willing to grant USAC in delaying major discipline, the USOPC has no sympathies or connections to any of these people or organizations and cannot, should not, and likely will not treat any of them as sacrosanct on the path to building a competitive Olympic program in the sport.

In some respects, reforming American cricket governance is a rescue operation, getting good people out of the morass of a niche sport that is under intense scrutiny by a much more powerful domestic organization for the first time. In other ways, it is a salvage effort, piecing together the worthwhile parts of the existing system like the aforementioned player and coach registration with new parts to make it functional. But as anyone who has ever compiled computers from spare parts or attempted to restore an old car will tell you, not every salvage effort is successful, and fewer still are worth the hassle. USA Cricket may simply prove too convoluted and toxic to do anything other than let it fall away and be succeeded by a fresher, more accountable, more credible governing body.

We get three more months of this. Yay, us. I wonder if there’s beer on the sun.

Thanks for reading Stumps & Stripes. I have three stories that are basically done that will be sprinkled out over the next few weeks and am leaving room for more coverage of the USAC saga as it develops. I’m also working on a piece on Minor League Cricket, specifically when or if we are going to see it this season. If you enjoyed what you read, you can also check out my recent piece on the Washington Freedom’s efforts to get a stadium built in Frederick. Surprise, there are issues!

My next story later this week - assuming nothing else in domestic governance catches fire - will be on a major pillar of the future of women’s cricket in America which may be coming soon to a TV near you. Stay tuned!