The inaugural election for the board of USA Cricket hit some speed bumps and the election is between 2 and 4 weeks behind schedule.  According to the original timeline, the elections should have started May 18 and concluded June 11.  After accounting for the fact that the run-off elections are no longer necessary and assuming rather optimistically that the elections will  commence at end of June, it could still be mid-July before the seven constituent board members are announced.  

By Venu Palaparthi

The inaugural election for the board of USA Cricket hit some speed bumps and the election is between 2 and 4 weeks behind schedule.  According to the original timeline, the elections should have started May 18 and concluded June 11.  After accounting for the fact that the run-off elections are no longer necessary and assuming rather optimistically that the elections will  commence at end of June, it could still be mid-July before the seven constituent board members are announced.  
The election saga has seen a couple of twists and turns already.   And yet, the latest delay poses more significant challenges because it is now amply clear that the final board of ten members will not be seated when the ICC meets in Dublin between June 28 and July 1, 2018.  ICC now has to either provisionally approve USA Cricket as the governing body or hold off on the decision until the board is seated. 

The initial registration process, which was hampered by software glitches and user interface issues, stuttered to a close on April 24.  The process also resulted in some lopsided registration owing to overall apathy and winter hibernation on the east coast.  Despite these issues, it was heartening to see that more than 8,000 individual members, 22 voting leagues, 151 voting clubs had registered.  

The eligible voter lists, which were supposed to be posted on April 28, were published a week behind schedule on May 5, 2018.  These lists were provisional in nature and were subject to a peer review process.  However, questions began to emerge on the completeness of the lists.  Some claimed that the extracts were missing certain classes of individual members.  There were also a number of other issues, but required an examination of logs and timestamps.

These issues were remedied by the Sustainable Foundation Advisory Group (SFAG) following a series of meetings and, according to a member of the group, the group prepared and submitted new lists to USA Cricket, which are awaiting publication.  Since these lists are different from the original lists, a new week-long peer review window might be opened, the source said.  

Following the new peer-review process, any items requiring review will be considered once again by the SFAG before the voter lists are presented as final.  All of this could take a couple of weeks at the very minimum. And that is not all, the validated lists have to be plugged into the ElectionBuddy, the online voting software that will be used for the election.   Once the system is set up, the election itself might require a week to complete and a further few days to review.   In summary, we are looking at mid to late July for the election to conclude.

Owing to the multi-step nature of the election process, USA Cricket appears to have become a little shy about issuing an updated timeline.  In an update issued on June 6, Eric Parthen, USA Project Manager for ICC Americas wrote: “While the election continues to be delayed, the Sustainable Foundation Advisory Group held two calls over the last several days and made considerable progress with resolving most of the outstanding items that were identified in the peer review process. Additional information regarding the election timeline will be released in the coming days and we appreciate your continued patience.”

This ‘hurry up and wait’ situation has not gone unnoticed in the cricket community, which had become accustomed to such delays in the past but expected a smoother process under ICC oversight.  Whether these delays could have been avoided and the absence of regular and ongoing communication have become topics of discussion in cricket circles. 

USA Cricket, however, sought to present the delay in a positive light.  In response to an emailed request for an update, Parthen wrote: “The delay in the election should only be considered a positive step as the Sustainable Foundation Advisory Group works to ensure the voting lists are as inclusive, transparent and accurate as possible leading up to these inaugural USA Cricket elections. Additional information on next steps will be available in the coming days.”