USA Cricket finds itself in hot water yet again after their effort to bring their internal legal battle to truce was rejected by the plaintiffs ahead of ICC Chairman Jay Shah’s USA visit. Already under suspension notice on charges of misgovernance that were slapped in ICC AGM last year, USAC was served a fresh legal notice by terminated directors Arjun Gona, Kuljit Nijjar and Patricia Whitaker alongside incumbent director Atul Rai last month.
In a possible last ditch effort to douse fires ahead of Shah’s visit, USAC reinstated Gona and Nijjar to the board. However, it is learnt that the plaintiffs are in no mood to bury the hatchet unless their grievances are settled by the court. Apart from the reinstatement of all the three terminated directors, a major relief sought in the lawsuit is the removal of the rest of the directors on the board including the president Venu Pisike.
USAC announced the termination of Whitaker, Nijjar and Gona in February this year after their ethics committee corroborated the charges of ‘wreaking havoc on other board directors, including by disrupting meetings, ignoring their obligations, breaching confidentiality, publicising false allegations about the board and putting their interests above the organisations’ leveled against the trio. The non-reinstatement of Whitaker, who unlike Gona and Nijjar is a non-elected board member by the virtue of being an independent director has been perceived as a malice by plaintiffs.
“I think it is because they believe that she is the easier one to deal with, as against the other two. If you’re saying we need to follow governance protocols, therefore we are going to have these two people back then all three should have been back, because in her case, the complaint against her was much minor as against Nijjar or Gona. And I’m going by what they actually had written against them. All she did was write a letter to the ICC. So, which even Venu and Salver have done in the past. They’ve written letters that they shouldn’t have” said Rai to Cricbuzz.
Dallas Cricket League, the home organization of Nijjar and Gona too took a dim view of the reinstatements. The league issued a press release to lash out at the current USAC regime for being ‘discriminative’ towards Whittaker.
“In a striking move that further damages the credibility of USA Cricket, the Board has reinstated only two of the three wrongfully removed Board Members—Arjun Gona and Kuljit Nijjar—while continuing to exclude Patricia Whittaker, despite all three being removed under the same purported allegations and subjected to identical unconstitutional procedures. This selective action not only reinforces concerns of discriminatory treatment, but also serves as undeniable proof of the unethical, undemocratic, and unlawful practices that have defined the Board’s leadership over the past year” read an excerpt from the DCL press release.
The lawsuit has also thrown a series of USAC director level elections in a tangle which were originally supposed to take place in January this year. Apart from catching ICC’s ire over misgovernance issues, its internal turmoil has ruffled feathers with United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC). USAC is yet to be anointed as the National Governing Body for cricket in USA by USOPC due to its dysfunctional nature. It is learnt that USOPC has stipulated a May deadline for USAC to get certified with a precondition of having a ‘full functioning board’.
It is evident that the current chaos does not remotely define the precondition demanded by the USOPC which not only jeopardises their NGB status with USOPC but the ICC as well. USAC are treading on thin ice and have little time to get their house in order before their USOPC deadline and the arrival of Shah next month as termination looms,
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