USACA board sets elections for March 17

The USA Cricket Association (USACA) general election will now be held at a Special General Meeting on March 17, 2012, according to a letter emailed on Tuesday from the USACA board of directors to all member league presidents and regional chairmen.

A board meeting had been held on December 3 to announce that the elections would be postponed for a minimum of 90 days because most leagues failed to submit all of the materials requested from a lawyer, hired by USACA, to conduct what has become a protracted and controversial compliance review process to help decide which leagues are eligible to vote.

The letter includes a plea for the leagues to cooperate with the lawyer and USACA so that the organization may be able to carry out its plan with New Zealand Cricket (NZC), Podar Enterprises, InSite and Top Bloom - who banded together to form Cricket Holdings America (CHA) in 2010 - to manage a Twenty20 league in the USA next summer.

"This is a critical period for USACA," the letter states. "With an agreement with our international partners now in place, USACA is on the verge of a new era, creating a Twenty20 professional cricket league, implementing new and expanded cricket programs and greatly increasing the popularity of cricket throughout the United States. To move forward with assurance and authority and to ensure that there are no organizational or procedural impediments individually, and as an organization, that could cause us to stumble along the way, it is important to ensure that all members are committed to the organization's policies and procedures and are fully compliant with the rules of the organization."

USACA was due to get a US$3 million bonus by the end of November as part of its deal with CHA, but according to one source the money has yet to come in because the CHA partners have not been able to bring in another investor to trigger the bonus. The failure is being blamed on the fact that businessmen are hesitant to get involved in a relationship with USACA while it continues to have governance issues.

It may also be having an effect on the ability to find good candidates to fill the CEO and Twenty20 league Commissioner position that was advertised in October. A joint press release by USACA and NZC two months ago stated that the CHA partners were accepting applications for someone to take charge of running the proposed Twenty20 league. The release stated that "an appointment is expected to be made by the end of the year" but there has been little news since and it does not appear that a person will be hired before 2012.