ICC delegation to meet stakeholders of USA cricket in New York

An ICC delegation led by chief executive David Richardson and chairman Shashank Manohar will be in New York City this weekend to meet various stakeholders regarding progress for cricket in the USA.

The ICC Americas office has been acting in an administrative caretaker role since the ICC's suspension of the USA Cricket Association (USACA) in June 2015. Manohar, Richardson, ICC chief legal counsel Iain Higgins, WICB president Dave Cameron and Singapore Cricket Association chairman Imran Khawaja, who is one of the three Associate representatives on the ICC board, are expected to be part of the delegation. The delegation will hold meetings while building a progress report to be delivered at the next ICC board meeting in October.

According to several sources, the ICC travelling party will be meeting with members of the four advisory groups that were appointed in May to oversee the implementation of the ICC's strategy for cricket development in the USA. That strategy includes goals for qualifying for the 2019 World Cup and 2020 World T20. ICC Americas administrators are expected to fly in from their new office in Colorado Springs to be in New York this weekend. Recently hired USA coach Pubudu Dassanayake is also expected to be in attendance.

The delegation is also scheduled to meet USACA president Gladstone Dainty. The USACA announced on Thursday that it had secured a $70 million dollar licensing deal with a Pennsylvania-based entity called Global Sports Ventures, LLC. At a press conference in New York on Thursday, Dainty said that he was confident the ICC would lift the USACA's suspension.

"The ICC and the suspension of USACA, everybody knows about it," Dainty said. "I'm not going to say how USACA feel about it. But at this time we feel good in the sense that the CEO of the ICC said that they've investigated long and hard, they found nothing and it is our expectation that we will be reinstated without a problem shortly. If we aren't, then I'm sure that you guys are going to make sure that justice is done."