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By Peter Della Penna (on Twitter)

In the wake of USACA’s decision to bar 32 out of 47 member leagues from voting in upcoming USACA elections, USACA board member Mark Sood says that the decisions made to ban certain leagues and not others lacked consistency and that “any reasoning with the board to make a sensible decision didn’t go through anywhere.”

In an exclusive interview, Sood confirmed that he was one of only two dissenting voices during most of the votes as he continuously voted to keep leagues eligible while the majority of board members voted to make leagues ineligible from voting. The only other board member who voted with Sood on these issues at any time during the meeting was North West Region representative Ajay Athavale. New York Region representative Krish Prasad had earlier stated his views during the meeting that he did not approve of how things were being organized and left in protest before any votes were taken. South East Region representative Nasir “Charlie” Javed did not attend the meeting and also was not a part of any vote.

According to Sood, the board took individual votes on each of the 12 leagues in “Group B” which were characterized by compliance auditor Robert Chance as leagues that “could be considered eligible to vote, depending on board decision.” Curiously though, Sood says that hardly any debate or discussion took place to weigh the worthiness of each league to be voted eligible or ineligible based on the evidence gathered by chance. Instead, Sood claims that a straight vote was taken on each league and mysteriously three leagues got approval while nine were not approved despite the lack of discussion.

Image (right): Mark Sood [Courtesy: Travel Talk Radio]

According to documents obtained by DreamCricket from a source, the 12 leagues in Group B were Central Florida Cricket Association, Brooklyn Cricket League, New York Cricket League, New York Metropolitan and District Cricket Association, Florida Southeast Cricket League, Mid Atlantic Cricket Conference, San Diego Cricket League, Northern California Cricket Association, California Cricket Academy, Connecticut Cricket League, Southern Connecticut Cricket League and Massachusetts State Cricket League. Three leagues – Central Florida Cricket Association, Brooklyn Cricket League and New York Cricket League remained eligible while the other nine were voted to be ineligible in a majority vote of the USACA board.

Sood says he was shocked when the board voted to allow the New York Cricket League to remain eligible, despite the fact that the league never paid membership dues to USACA in 2010. Meanwhile, the San Diego Cricket League paid its league dues, albeit three days late. USACA happily took the money from the SDCL but the board voted to rule the league ineligible.

“I questioned the San Diego Cricket Association because the only reason to not allow them was because they were late by three days,” said Sood. “They completed everything else. Everything was proper but they were just late by three days. I said if you’re going to make this concession to Brooklyn Cricket League and New York Cricket League, why would you not for the San Diego Cricket Association and I was voted down.”

When Sood asked USACA president Gladstone Dainty why the New York Cricket League was allowed to be eligible despite not paying dues in 2010, Sood responded by saying that “according to Mr. Dainty, they allowed them not to pay and it was okay. The reason is they don’t have any grounds to play on. So the league in actuality is defunct. If they’re not playing any cricket, they don’t have any grounds... so what good is it having them as members?”

Sood claims there was hardly any opportunity to press the claims of legitimacy for the leagues in “Group C” which had 17 member leagues that Chance said “should not be considered eligible to vote.”

“There were hardly any discussions,” said Sood. “If there were any discussions, it was because of the points that I raised or Ajay raised. There were absolutely no other things from anybody at all. Nobody asked any questions to Mr. Chance other than me and Ajay. When it came to individual leagues, all the regional directors were silent. All they voted was yay or nay and that was the end of it. The only arguments were for the South West Region or North West Region. That’s it.”

He was ultimately denied as Chance gave brief reasons why each league was should be declared ineligible. There were four leagues from the South West in Group C.

“Arizona, according to Mr. Chance, all clubs did not pay USACA dues and the reason given that all clubs cannot afford fees is not acceptable,” said Sood. “According to Mr. Chance, in 2010 and 2011, the Arizona Cricket League had 14 clubs listed on their web site but they only paid for eight. When he asked for a reason, he was told that not all clubs can afford the fees for USACA which according to him is unacceptable. For SCCA, 2010 and 2011, club lists did not match with the web site. In 2010, the web site listed 38 whereas the dues were paid for 36. In 2011, the web site lists 38 and dues were paid for 37.”

“I questioned him. Does he understand that it’s the clubs that are members and not the teams? SCCA has various clubs that have multiple teams so as long as the club is a member, that’s what could be the discrepancy. He said he does understand that but he’s just going by what it shows on the web site. San Diego got everything else. Only default they had was late by three days and the board would not consider them.”

“GLACA is, Mr. Chance, the reason he gave is not enough players, inconsistent rosters and accurate information has not been given. So not enough players were members of the league, inconsistent rosters were provided and not accurate information was given. They didn’t have enough players. As for Orange County, he said problem with the meetings according to the constitution and financial controls are not strong enough. These were the two reasons.”

Overall, Sood says that the process was inadequate and that he was particularly puzzled why exceptions were made for some leagues but not for others. The same measuring stick was not consistently applied.

“If you are making concessions for one then you have to make concessions for the others,” said Sood. “If there are 12 on the borderline, which according to the attorney the board should consider, and you only pick three out of them and not the other nine, it does not make sense.”

Particularly confusing to Sood was how USACA could take money from leagues without approving their eligibility beforehand. Now that they have been ruled ineligible after the fact, Sood says USACA should return the leagues their money and not wait for the leagues to take legal action to force the money to be returned.

“You took money from them,” said Sood. “You accepted them as members and now for the elections we come to a compliance process. Why did you accept them before if they were not a member in good standing? It should not have been accepted and I think the onus is on USACA to refund their money. USACA should give their money back to all these leagues that are ineligible.”

Sood was not against the compliance process, but says the timing of the audit was not right.

“We have situations from what I know that we have leagues that are just paper leagues so the compliance process is required and is necessary,” said Sood. “I think what I would question is the timing of the compliance process. Is this the right time to do it just before the elections? So what is the purpose of doing compliance before the elections? Why was it not done earlier? The thing is if the discrepancies are minor, should that be reason enough to bar these leagues?”

Sood also wanted to take issue with Michael Gale, who Sood says was responsible for writing the meeting minutes and the summary which appeared on the USACA web site.

“I had asked for the meeting minutes and I am reading the summary right now and I don’t know what this summary is. It’s not properly recorded,” said Sood. “I had asked as a board member that the board, the people that are voting the names for each league for each voting process, they should be recorded. If I am voting yes, then my name should go next to it. It’s within my rights to ask for it and I did ask for it and it’s not recorded properly. And to say, I mean I’m reading here in the minutes he’s saying, ‘The board expressed disappointment that only one third of USACA membership is in good standing.’ That’s nonsense. Everybody seemed very happy with it except me. I was the only person who voiced that this is a sad day in cricket that out of the 47 leagues we only have 15 that are eligible and they changed it to, ‘The board expressed disappointment.’ This is manipulating the minutes and the procedure. It’s not complete and it’s missing important information. It does not even record that I objected that we were not given sufficient time to study Mr. Chance’s report.”

Sood says he never read the report ahead of Sunday morning’s board meeting. The report was was sent out by Chance on Saturday night, 7:22 p.m. PST (10:22 p.m. EST). Sood was only aware that it was sent out when he went to check the conference call password a few minutes before the board meeting began. It was then that he saw an email from Chance.

“It’s a Saturday. I’m not checking my emails on a Saturday evening on a weekend,” said Sood. “I was watching the India and Australia game until 1 o’clock in the morning. So I went to sleep late and I just put an alarm 10 minutes before the meeting to wake up and get online. So just when I was checking emails to get the password for the call-in number, that’s when I realized there was an email from Mr. Chance.”

“I asked Mr. Chance that he hasn’t given us sufficient time to study his report. His report came to us on Saturday evening which is a weekend, like late in the evening about 8 o clock and he expected us to read it during the night, make any interrogations and be ready for a meeting on Sunday morning? That did not give us sufficient time. The second thing is that I asked him as to why his report is incomplete because it did not give or list any leagues and why they were not, what was lacking in compliance.”

Not only did Sood object to the amount of time in between receiving Chance’s email and the start of the board meeting, but Prasad objected as well and left the meeting in protest. Sood said he feels 48 hours would have been adequate time to study the document sent by Chance before commencing the meeting.

When USACA first vice-president Michael Gale was asked if he felt adequate time was given for board members to review the document before the meeting, he responded, “Can you actually tell me what the nature of this question is? Is the nature of the question had members of the board seen this information before and this is the first time or is the nature of the question the members have not seen this information and this is the first time?”

“Members of the board had received progressively over this audit period, constant updates of the information relating to the audit process. The information delivered to them that morning was marginally different than information delivered progressively over the last weeks and months through to this. So this was neither new, either in format or in nature or in variables, and probably had some small variations compared to previous documentation they’d been seeing. This is not the first time they’d seen this information in this format with those recommendations.”

Another concern from some stakeholders is the representation of players from ineligible leagues in the US national team for the upcoming 2012 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier in the UAE. Seven players – half the squad – played in leagues in 2011 that USACA has deemed to be illegitimate including Elmore Hutchinson (SCCA), Abhimanyu Rajp (SCCA), Asif Khan (Midwest Cricket Conference), Nauman Mustafa (NCCA), Andy Mohammed (Eastern American Cricket Association), Muhammad Ghous (Garden State Cricket League) and vice-captain Aditya Mishra (Cricket League of New Jersey).

When Gale was asked if their participation on the tour to the UAE would be affected if they had played in leagues that were ruled ineligible, Gale responded, “The eligibility relates to the electoral process. There are still three statuses of leagues in this country. Associate, affiliate and so on. I can’t answer the specifics of that.”