'USA stakeholders are fragmented' - Richardson

ICC chief executive David Richardson says a plan is being organised to appoint a local advisory board in America to help the USA Cricket Association rectify numerous issues that resulted in having its Associate membership suspended on Friday at the ICC annual conference. Richardson stated that USACA's "conditions relating to governance, finance and its cricket activities" are of great concern and "must be addressed and remedied in full" before consideration will be given to lifting USACA's suspension.

"We will visit the USA," Richardson told assembled media at a press conference on Friday in Barbados where USACA's suspension was announced. "We will set to support the development of a meaningful strategy for USA cricket going forward including through the appointment of a locally based advisory group which we think will be well placed to put USA on track, put a strategy in place to be able to move forward."

Richardson stated that the "unification of stakeholders" was especially important for cricket to move forward in the USA, echoing statements made by ICC head of global development Tim Anderson in a recent interview with ESPNcricinfo. At the moment, Richardson says the rivalry between USACA and the American Cricket Federation has created a divide in the country which is further compounded by the ambivalence of players and leagues not interested in pledging allegiance to either group, choosing to organise activities on their own instead.

"Cricket is played in upwards of 80 or 90 leagues in the USA but they are fragmented," Richardson said. "Some of them are under the USA Cricket Association. Some are under another rival body called the American Cricket Federation. Some are on their own and there is no coordinated effort.

"It's going to be a challenging task but hopefully these efforts will be aimed at unifying everybody and then moving forward with a proper strategy and hopefully we'll see USA cricket qualifying for major global events. If the UAE and countries like that can get to the events, there's no reason with the number of cricketers in the US that USA cricket can't do the same."

Richardson played down suggestions USACA's problems are bad enough that it would result in expulsion from the ICC. A decision on expelling USACA as an ICC member would not be taken until the 2016 ICC annual conference at the earliest. However, Richardson was optimistic that things can improve with the assistance of the local advisory board - as well as oversight from himself and representatives from the BCCI, ECB, WICB and Cricket Australia - well before next June.

"Hopefully we'll make some significant progress by the October meetings," Richardson said. "We aim to report back to the board by then. We would have visited the USA and put the advisory group in place and they will be getting on with putting together a strategy and plan that we will hopefully be able to report back by October."