ICC appoints panel to select USA Cricket independent directors

The ICC and USA Cricket jointly announced the formation of a four-member nominating and governance committee on Thursday, whose main role will be to put forward candidates to fill the three independent director slots on the new 10-member USA Cricket board of directors. The four members of the committee - who were selected by the ICC's sustainable foundation advisory group (SFAG) for redeveloping US cricket governance in the wake of USACA's suspension and subsequent expulsion - are ICC chief executive David Richardson, Amy Perko, Rohan Chandran and Keith Aaron.

Perko was a three-time Academic All-American basketball player from 1983 to 1987 at Wake Forest before she transitioned into a career as a sports administrator where, in one of her previous roles, she served as an Associate Athletic Director at the University of Kansas. Her inclusion is noteworthy as it signals a continued effort by the ICC's Project USA caretaker administration, which served as a bridge to the new USA Cricket administration, to build links with the wider US sports community as well as demonstrating a concerted effort to seek out female administrators that were nonexistent in the history of the USACA executive board. According to the new USA Cricket constitution, the three independent directors must not have held any administrative roles in cricket in the last three years and at least one must be female.

Perko is currently the chief executive of the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, a college sports committee founded in 1989 whose mission is "to promote reforms that support and strengthen the educational mission of college sports", according to its website. Among the current 17-member Knight Commission panel are former NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue, NBA Hall of Famer and 1992 Olympic basketball Dream Team member David Robinson, and Harvard Medical School neurosurgery resident Myron Rolle, who earned AP All-American honours as a defensive back on the Florida State football team in 2008 before famously postponing an opportunity to play in the NFL in order to accept a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship at Oxford.

Chandran is well known in US cricket circles as one of the founders of ESPNcricinfo. Originally from Hong Kong, where he captained the national Under-19 team, Chandran now resides in the San Francisco Bay Area where he works as a technology executive and has been heavily involved in local cricket as a longtime member of Stanford Cricket Club. Chandran is familiar to Richardson and other ICC administrators after he was interviewed in late 2012 as one of five finalists for the vacant USACA chief executive position that eventually went to Australian administrator Darren Beazley.

Aaron has over 30 years of experience as a business executive and cricket administrator in New York according to the ICC release. Prior to coming to America, Aaron captained the Guyana Under-19 team in 1968 to a regional junior title where he was team-mates with Dr. Vincent Adams, a member of the SFAG that appointed Aaron and the others.

"The appointment of ICC Chief Executive, Mr. Richardson, represents the ICC's continued commitment to the growth of cricket in the United States - something the SFAG has been eager to maintain," said Adams in an ICC release. "His experience along with the skills and expertise of Mr. Aaron, Ms. Perko and Mr. Chandran ensure the NGC will play an extremely important role in identifying the right Independent Directors to work alongside the elected Members to take USA Cricket forward for many years to come."

The three independent directors will be appointed by the inaugural seven-person executive board after receiving nominations from Richardson's new committee. The seven constituent directors - three individual directors, one club director, one league director, and one male and female elite player representative - will be voted in through the inaugural USA Cricket elections scheduled for June, just ahead of the ICC annual conference. A new 10-member board including the three independent directors can then be installed in time for USA Cricket to be formally approved as the officially recognised national governing body to replace USACA after its expulsion in 2017. Those seeking to be eligible to vote in the USA Cricket elections have until April 24 to register as members of USA Cricket.