The embattled USA Cricket (USAC) has been granted a three-month reprieve by the Worldwide Cricket Council (ICC), amid ongoing governance points and uncertainty surrounding its position in staff choice for the 2028 Olympics, set to be hosted by Los Angeles.
The choice was taken on the ICC’s annual board assembly held in Singapore on Saturday, July 19, the place USAC’s progress, or lack thereof, was reviewed. The American cricket board has been underneath scrutiny for practically a yr after being placed on discover throughout the 2024 ICC Annual Convention, with the directive to rectify its inner administrative and governance lapses. Regardless of the intervention of a Normalisation Committee, which visited the U.S. final month, little progress seems to have been made.
The state of affairs has change into notably delicate as USAC’s standing with america Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC), the nation’s apex Olympic authority, has additionally deteriorated. Nonetheless, the ICC stopped wanting suspending USAC, seemingly influenced by the importance of america internet hosting the LA28 Olympic Video games, the place cricket is ready to make its return after nearly 100 years.
Sarcastically, regardless of its inner turmoil, USA’s males’s and ladies’s groups are anticipated to obtain automated qualification for the Olympics because the host nation. But, the larger dilemma now could be who will choose these groups, with USAC’s authority underneath query and ICC officers weighing the opportunity of different interim mechanisms if governance points should not resolved.
In response, the ICC has opted to implement a hybrid qualification mannequin for the LA28 Video games. Underneath this method, some groups will qualify based mostly on ICC T20 rankings, whereas others might want to compete in Olympic qualifiers. India, at the moment ranked No. 1 within the ICC Males’s T20I rankings, are anticipated to earn automated qualification whatever the rating closing date.
In the meantime, the ICC Board has additionally constituted a working group tasked with evaluating and recommending structural modifications throughout all three codecs of the sport. These suggestions are anticipated to be introduced on Monday, July 21, the ultimate day of the Singapore conclave.
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