'Floodlights shut off due to lack of communication'

Contrary to claims made by USACA that a "floodlight malfunction" caused a crucial group stage encounter at the 2015 USACA T20 National Championship in Florida to be stopped with three overs remaining on Saturday night, a Broward County Parks official has told ESPNcricinfo that the lights were timed to turn off at 10 pm because that is how long USACA had requested for the use of the facility.

Duncan Finch, who oversees the use of the cricket fields at Central Broward Regional Park in Lauderhill as the Parks and Recreation Manager at Broward County, responded in an email to ESPNcricinfo on Sunday that USACA had reserved the fields for a 12-hour block and that there was no malfunction that caused the lights to go off.

"The bottom line is that there was a lack of communication between USACA and the park employee," Finch stated. "USACA asked to have the outer fields from 9:30 am to 9:30 pm to play three Twenty20 games. I put the lights on till 10:00pm. Twelve and a half hours to play three games should be plenty of time to complete them. No one asked to extend the lights and assumed that they would stay on past the 9:30 contracted time."

According to the tournament schedule released by USACA, three blocks of games were set to be played with each block beginning at 9:30 am, 2 pm and 6 pm. However, the final game between Central East and North West played on the satellite fields outside the main stadium pitch did not begin until 6:45 pm according to USACA tournament director Owen Grey. The lights shut off at approximately 10 pm and Grey claimed it happened due to a "malfunction".

At the time the lights went off, North West were 119 for 3 in 17 overs, needing another 29 to beat Central East's total of 147. Had Central East won, they would have gone to the semi-final ahead of New York. Instead the game was declared a tie according to Duckworth-Lewis calculations from the point the match was stopped. A loss would not have prevented North West's progress to the knockout stage. Finch says attempts were made to get the lights back on to accommodate the players but that tournament officials had already called off the game.

"Park staff called the lighting company to turn the lights back on but there's a 20-minute cooling-off delay and the umpires had already called the game off and the teams were not still on the field so he shut them back down at 10:30," Finch wrote. "No T20 games should take more than three and a half hours to play at a national level and the umpire's duty is to move the game along so this not happen."

Finch also said that any of the Central Broward Regional Park staff would have "gladly" adjusted the timer for the lights to go off later than 10 pm had they only been made aware at the start that the games would go on later than expected. Instead, Finch says no one from USACA informed any of the parks officials of the status of the tournament games.