USACA Election: Only 15 out of 47 Total Member Leagues will be eligible to vote

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From Cricinfo.com

By Peter Della Pena

The USA Cricket Association (USACA) has announced that just 15 out of 47 total member leagues will be eligible to vote in the upcoming USACA general elections. The other 32 leagues were ruled to be non-compliant and thus ineligible to vote after the completion of an audit conducted by Texas attorney Robert Chance.

The news is a major blow to cricket stakeholders less than a week after the announcement that Keith Wyness, the former chief executive at both Aberdeen and Everton FC, was hired as the first CEO of Cricket Holdings America, a joint venture between USACA and New Zealand Cricket to develop cricket in the United States primarily through the start of a professional domestic Twenty20 league.

According to USACA, the board met on February 26 to review Chance’s final report in which he divided 41 out of the 47 leagues into three tiers of classification: “should be considered eligible to vote”, “could be considered eligible to vote, depending on board decision” and a third group “should not be considered eligible to vote”. The determinations were made based on a nine-item list of criteria that each league was instructed to satisfy in order to remain eligible.

The 12 leagues in the first group were all unanimously approved as eligible to vote by the board while the 17 in the third group were immediately declared ineligible through a 6-2 majority vote. The board then took individual votes for each league in the middle classification group to decide which ones would stay eligible. Out of the 12 on the borderline, three leagues – Brooklyn Cricket League, New York Cricket League and Central Florida Cricket Association – were approved to vote while the other nine were all struck down.

Among those leagues that have been disqualified are some of the oldest and largest leagues in America. They include the New York Metropolitan and District Cricket Association, Eastern American Cricket Association (NY), Commonwealth Cricket League (NY), Cricket League of New Jersey, Northern California Cricket Association, Southern California Cricket Association and Midwest Cricket Conference. Two regions, the South West and North East, had all of their leagues ruled ineligible.

“This is a big farce,” USACA board member Krish Prasad told ESPNcricinfo on Monday night. “I hope that something happens or someone looks into this to clear it up. This is the total destruction for United States cricket and an embarrassment.”

Prasad says that board members were sent an email containing Chance’s verdict on the leagues at 10.22 pm EST on February 25, just over 12 hours before an 11am board meeting on Sunday the 26th. He said only got a chance to read the email once the meeting had already gotten underway on Sunday morning.

“At that point I voiced my opinion that this is ridiculous,” Prasad said. “We gave you four months to come up with this compliance report. You worked on it. You give us an extension. You reply back. You ask for more information. We give it to you. In one day, you tell us we have to make a decision right away? We have to look at it and get some more information.

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From Cricinfo by Peter Della Pena