New format in focus at USACA T20 National Championship

More than 100 of USA's top players are heading to Florida this weekend to take part in the 2015 USACA T20 National Championship. They will compete for spots in an 18-man USA squad for the ICC Americas Division One Twenty20, which will be announced at the conclusion of the event on Sunday. USA will be hosting the Americas Division One T20 - a four-team event that also features Bermuda, Canada and Suriname - in May.

The tournament will also see the introduction of a different format. Eight teams have been split into two groups of four with the top two in each group advancing to Sunday's semi-finals in Lauderhill. According to the USACA tournament press release, teams will not play anyone in their group. Instead, each team will play the four teams in the opposite group.

While this allows for each regional team to play an additional match in the group stage to press their case for national selection, it may also result in a severely unbalanced knockout stage. Theoretically, four teams could finish 4-0 in Group A and four teams at 0-4 in Group B resulting in two undefeated teams going to the semi-finals, along with two winless teams that would move forward based on the net run rate tiebreaker in their respective groups.

Only seven regional teams are participating with the South West not sending a team this year. Instead, USACA is organising a 'USA Developmental XI' featuring some players who participated with the South West in 2014 as well as a handful of players who didn't make their regional squads but were still deemed worthy of selection.

Like last year, there are also several USA national team players who will not be at this tournament. Due to the fact that USACA arranged the event on somewhat short notice on Easter holiday weekend, many players have withdrawn due to personal commitments and a few others due to work, including USA captain Steve Massiah, Usman Shuja, Orlando Baker, Rashard Marshall, Abhimanyu Rajp and Elmore Hutchinson. Despite messages in the past that players must be in attendance to be considered for national selection, at least a few of these names will still be in contention for the Americas Division One squad.

On a positive note, poor weather is unlikely to mar this year's tournament as it did in 2014 when only three out of a possible 19 games were played as 20-over matches without being reduced or abandoned. Another two runner-up matches wound up being scrapped due to a player walkout over frustrations with the organisers' decision to abandon the semi-finals in favor of a final plus a third and fifth place match due to concerns about more rain. The forecast in south Florida this weekend is for 80 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny skies with only a 10% chance of rain.

Click here to look at how the eight teams stack up for the USACA T20 National Championship.