ACA faces bleak future

The inability to generate sufficient funding has cost the Africa Cricket Association (ACA) its memorandum of understanding with the ICC. Budgetary concerns means the agreement will not be renewed when it expires on December 31, but the ACA has resolved to continue doing development work despite its cash-flow closing up.

The end of the MoU means the ICC will take over the activities of the ACA as part of its own development activities. This will include running tournaments which are part of the World Cricket League, as they do in the Americas, East Asia and Pacific, and European offices.

It will leave the ACA with very little of its activity duties. The organisation has yet to detail how it will continue to make itself part of the development of the game on the continent, but they insist they will not be dissolved entirely. For the last seven years, the ACA and ICC's agreement included a shared funding model in which the ACA had to provide 50% the ICC's monetary contribution to developing the game on the continent. and 40% of the salary of the ACA CEO, who took on the role of an ICC regional development officer.

In an ICC report to the development committee obtained by ESPNcricinfo, the ICC claim the ACA only contributes between 10 and 20%. The ACA has existed since 1997 and since then has only staged one money-making event, the Afro-Asia Cup of three ODIs held in South Africa in 2005. The money generated from that tournament was put into development. The competition took place again two years later in India, so the ACA did not profit from it, and has since not happened again. Essentially that made the ACA financially dependent on the ICC.

The ICC acknowledged that while the partnership worked "reasonably well," it mentioned "complicating factors in managing staff," and that the development philosophies of the ACA and ICC were "different - largely around the targeting of resources." This has "generated some tension and created a "difficult working environment for this joint role."

A similar breakaway of the ICC from the Asian Cricket Council is also being discussed.