Dainty reign leaves broken US cricket community

It may have been jarring to hear the words as they were spoken in a Barbados hotel by ICC chief executive David Richardson, to read the words in print in the ICC's official press release. But like a defendant on trial who holds out hope - no matter how farfetched, misguided or delusional - of escaping with an acquittal before hearing a verdict of "guilty", the sobering truth of USACA's accumulation of administrative failures became real with the uttering of "suspension".

In the two months leading up to Friday's decision, Richardson and several of his lieutenants - including ICC head of global development Tim Anderson and ICC Americas regional development manager Ben Kavanagh - spent considerable resources reaching out to more than 100 stakeholders currently engaged or recently involved in US cricket affairs.

Even though Anderson denied that the purpose of the interview process was to compile a dossier against USACA, many other indications pointed in that direction. A scathing 19-page letter from ICC chairman N Srinivasan to USACA in January warned them of an imminent suspension and the ICC followed that up in April with a proclamation that they were "not satisfied" with USACA's response.

Two points of emphasis were highlighted by Richardson during his press conference to announce the suspension. One was that USACA had lost the right to ICC funding, a blow for an organization already weighed down by more than $4 million in debt, and that USACA had lost sanctioning authority to determine what is classified as approved and unapproved cricket.

Few people could fault USACA if they could not organize big cricket events on their own due to their limited resources and lack of professional full-time staff. What has rankled with countless organizers though is not that USACA wasn't staging major events, but that they regularly stood in the way of those who had the resources to do so by refusing to approve events.

Mayor Richard J Kaplan of Lauderhill, Florida, frequently complained about USACA's habit of freezing the city's negotiations to host revenue-generating drawcards at the $70 million, 20,000 capacity Central Broward Regional Park, such as a proposed Pakistan v West Indies T20 series in July 2013 and Caribbean Premier League matches in the summer of 2014. Those negotiations may warm up again now that the likes of Kaplan can bypass USACA for sanctioning and go straight to the ICC, which should be a bit more accommodating.

On the governance front, USACA had operated with impunity since their last suspension was lifted in 2008, especially when there were few consequences to unconstitutional delays and the stripping of 32 member leagues' voting rights in the 2011-12 election. However, the ICC's long leash on USACA became very short following last year's resignation of chief executive Darren Beazley, a man the ICC handpicked to push through governance reforms that the USACA board rejected.

Gladstone Dainty may have scored a landslide win on the April 2012 election day but three years later it has proven to be a pyrrhic victory. More than a dozen of the member leagues who were disenfranchised in 2012 reached a breaking point after years of frustration under USACA and were spurred on to break away and form what became the American Cricket Federation.

Election improprieties on their own were not enough to raise a red flag with the ICC, but a competing governing body to USACA's hegemony was a key reason behind USACA's first two suspensions and played a supporting role in the one handed down on Friday.

Separate from the power struggles within the USA, the parlous state of USACA's finances made for a ripe target to justify suspension. USACA's ledger has remained in the red for as long as their financial records have been made public. In the last two years though, USACA's debts have more than doubled from $1.8 million to $4.1 million.

Rather than accuse USACA of sweeping financial mismanagement though, the ICC cleverly zeroed in on a special $200,000 loan granted to USACA by the ICC in the summer of 2013. In the grand scheme of things, $200,000 is a pittance to make a major fuss over for a global body generating roughly $2 billion through its latest television rights contract.

Other far more egregious membership violations allegedly carried out by USACA, such as accusations of election fraud through the rumoured ploy of registering ghost leagues to secure winning votes, have been difficult to prove. So is judging the legitimacy of a challenge for official status made by the upstart ACF.

But by holding USACA to account over what it deemed to be misuse of the $200,000 loan, the ICC finally had concrete evidence they could pin on USACA of the organisation's fiscal irresponsibility, and thus find them culpable of improper governance to a standard sufficient to warrant suspension. The ICC tacked on USACA's poor public reputation and substandard national team performances as supplementary reasons for a reprimand, but those are subjective measures. It is harder to mount a defense against objective data laid out in black and white.

Richardson concluded his comments in Barbados by stating that the ICC was willing to extend a helping hand to get USACA up off the mat, including sending a local advisory team to assist USACA to remedy their "conditions", as if USACA is a sickly patient, "relating to governance, finance and cricket activities". Rather than issuing a statement pledging to do penance for their sins and fall in line, there has been nothing but radio silence on USACA's airwaves.

The common thread through all three suspensions - 2005, 2007 and 2015 - has been Dainty. His reign, which began in 2003, has been an unmitigated disaster through and through. After making the Champions Trophy in 2004, USA has now been leapfrogged in the Associate rankings by Ireland, Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea and Hong Kong, four countries that combined don't have the adult player pool to equal USA. Dainty has left the US cricket community broken but blame must also be shared by the USACA league presidents who, swayed by his election promises, have used their votes to keep him in office on multiple occasions.

Questions may remain about who is best suited to take US cricket forward, and it may not necessarily be ACF, but by now it's crystal clear that a USACA executive board under Dainty is not the answer. If USACA's administration had any words on how they plan to fix the mess they've spent the last decade creating, they haven't shared them.

But with just one word on Friday, the ICC spoke volumes.