US CRICKET
USA Cricket leadership is writing about adversity and staying true to the game, but the leagues, directors, and court dockets are writing a different story © Getty
USA Cricket began the weekend by publishing a lengthy essay that blamed its commercial partner, American Cricket Enterprises (ACE), for years of strain and defended the board’s decision to cut ties. The piece, headlined “A Difficult Chapter for USA Cricket,” cast the ICC’s September 23 suspension as a tough but temporary stumble and presented the termination of ACE’s agreement as a principled stand.
Within hours, the narrative was overwhelmed with counter-replies. Board directors said the release did not have board approval. League presidents voted to recall one of chairman Venu Pisike’s closest allies. And a fresh court filing questioned whether the federation’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy was filed to gain leverage minutes before a state-court hearing.
The ICC’s view is on the record. On September 23, the global body suspended USA Cricket for continued non-compliance with membership criteria, a step telegraphed since the 2024 AGM, when USAC was put “on notice” and given a year to fix governance. The ICC’s statement did not mention ACE. It focused on USAC’s failures but also confirmed that players would remain eligible for ICC events while governance is normalized, including the road to LA28.
USA Cricket says it terminated ACE to protect the sport from “commercial overreach,” and that the ICC’s suspension “has been difficult to comprehend.” But the ICC’s public record predates the termination vote and describes long-running non-compliance, undercutting the claim that the suspension was a reaction to the ACE decision. It also explains why the federation’s push to reframe events has found so little traction among those now breaking ranks.
The ICC has stated that its normalisation committee will outline the steps for the suspension of USA Cricket to be lifted, but have not yet done so.
Shifting power at the Board
As first reported by Cricbuzz, seven of nine listed league presidents voted unanimously to recall board director Anj Balasu, an ally of Pisike, last week, first in a written petition on September 28, and most recently in a special meeting held on October 9. The minutes note that 78% of all eligible League Members participated in the vote. This is significant, as recent USAC board votes have been 5-4 towards Pisike’s camp, and a removal of Balasu would result in a 4-4 split vote at the board. It remains to be seen whether USA Cricket CEO Johnathan Atkeison will recognize the leagues’ vote or ignore it.
Within the board, dissent is growing louder. Two sitting directors, Kuljit Singh Nijjar and Arjun Rao Gona, and former independent director Patricia Whittaker published a note titled “They Destroyed the Dream”, in which they accuse the board of manipulating governance, silencing dissent, and unlawfully stacking committees – failures which they say led to ICC’s suspension of USA Cricket. “We raised our voices for transparency and were muted, removed, and humiliated while the people who caused the disaster now write public letters pretending to be heroes,” Nijjar said.
Separately, board director Atul Rai went further in a written note circulated by email to the community. Alongside calling the media release “an abuse of power”, his explosive note makes many significant claims:
that Pisike manipulated the 2023 board elections, and interfered with the member registration portal thereafter
that he unlawfully terminated board members, including Whittaker
that Pisike has claimed ‘force majeure’ as the basis to extend his term as Chairperson and the terms of friendly board allies David Haubert and Srini Salver beyond their term limit of December 31, 2024.
that USAC has spent nearly $500,000 in legal fees in 2025
Rai also states that he has “no personal interest in MLC or MiLC”, but believes that “they are good for USA Cricket.”
USA Cricket directors Nijjar, Gona, Rai, Gruny, and former director Whittaker have called for the ICC Normalisation Committee to step in, independently probe the organisation’s actions, and reconstitute the board, to protect players and competitions during the transition.
Bankruptcy court: The new battleground
Ten days after the ICC suspended USA Cricket, on October 1, USA Cricket filed for Chapter 11 in Colorado, where Atkeison described the process as a “next step” in restructuring. The petition placed the organisation under the supervision of a bankruptcy judge and a Subchapter V trustee.
ACE, in its own filing to the bankruptcy court, argues the filing was timed to halt a preliminary-injunction hearing connected to ACE’s arbitration, and it invites the court to examine whether the case was filed in good faith. The filing also notes USAC’s own papers showing $50,207 in cash at filing, and a request to pay about $41,250 in wages to unnamed USAC employees, numbers that leave “less than $10,000” on hand if granted.In the bankruptcy filings, spectators also noted the $125,000 prepaid legal retainers to Billion Law and Black Lion Services, two law firms used by Atkeison when he oversaw USA Rugby’s bankruptcy process as COO in 2020.
ACE initiated arbitration against the termination of its agreement on September 16, and a hearing for a preliminary injunction was set for October 1, but USAC declared bankruptcy minutes before that hearing.
In its reservation of rights, ACE frames the bankruptcy filing as an attempt “to obtain a litigation advantage,” and flags what it says is a lack of basic Subchapter V disclosures by USAC. ACE previewed a motion to dismiss for alleged bad faith, or at minimum expanded trustee oversight, while reciting a list of parallel suits that challenge USAC’s internal actions and the status of certain board officers. None of that guarantees a dismissal, but it does guarantee discovery, affidavits, inquiries on governance, and a public record that will be harder to spin than a media release.
On the field uncertainty and challenges
Meanwhile, the contradictions of policy versus reality are spilling onto the field. On October 9, USA Cricket announced the U19 Men’s National Championship for October 10-13 at Prairie View, Texas, the same facility ecosystem long linked to ACE. Within days, USAC publicly acknowledged that “long-time facility partners” had withdrawn and that the event would be reconfigured. The optics are hard to miss: the federation that is suing to unwind ACE’s position also expected to stage its premier youth event at ACE-associated grounds.
Meanwhile, the US National men’s team’s planned tour to Sri Lanka, slated to depart October 13, has also been pushed, as administrators navigate cash controls and approvals inside Chapter 11. The earlier training camp in Morrisville for the National men’s team was also cancelled, as were the October West Indies tours for the USA U19 National Team and the West Indies women’s tour of USA.
USA Cricket has not published a comprehensive update, but stakeholders describe planning uncertainty and a scramble for solutions, alongside frustration that USAC spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on bankruptcy legal fees, rather than supporting key preparation initiatives of the national team at a critical time, ahead of the US team’s CWC qualifying events later this month in Dubai and participation in the T20 World Cup in February 2026 in India.
For players and parents, the most urgent questions are simpler. Will events occur on turf, on time, and with costs similar to prior years? Will national-team tours go ahead without last-minute cash squeezes? The ICC has been careful to ring-fence athlete eligibility while imposing an administrative sanction. That buys time, not trust. Rebuilding the latter will require a governance reset that USAC’s own critics, now speaking openly, say must include the removal or replacement of the chair’s bloc, genuine independence on the board, and a transparent audit of decisions taken in the past year.
USA Cricket leadership is writing about adversity and staying true to the game, but the leagues, directors, and court dockets are writing a different story. The anti-Pisike coalition is no longer anonymous or abstract. It is voting, filing, and writing. Each step tightens the circle around a leadership group that has run out of places to point.
© Cricbuzz