2014 National Tournament
LAKE WORTH, FLORIDA: USACA announces the move to take the 2014 National Tournament to the purpose-built cricket stadium in Broward County, Florida. This enables USACA to have a floodlight stadium, used for international games, for the national tournament and allows for more games to be played in one stadium with floodlights. The Broward County stadium has international quality practice and changing facilities for players, is custom built for broadcasters and the members of the crowd have full stadium seating and protection. We have previously broadcast international games from this stadium.
Broward County Stadium in Florida which will host the games. Photo by Shiek Mohamed
Sunil Kumar, the Project Manager for the national tournament and The President of the Northern California Cricket Association states: “The costs for teams, families and fans to travel and stay in Indianapolis were just exceptionally high. There are rarely if ever enough direct flights available and that was causing teams to have to take more personal time off. Added to this we were not able to get a large enough sponsor to subsidize these costs for all regions and the forty plus leagues involved in the national championship if the tournament was to be held in a non-traditional cricket market.”
USACA is still very keen to find ways to help grow interest and participation in the sport in the Indianapolis area and has junior cricket kits and available coaching expertise to help the mayor and the city be introduced to the sport.
The tournament will be held from August 14th to August 16th with the appearance of the eight major regions in the finals process. Because more grounds are available, USACA is now able to compress the time period for players into a shorter tournament length saving players and families both their valuable time and money.
The opportunity to host the national championship in Florida gives players more opportunity to play on the best surfaces, as preparations are already underway for the USA team to play in the Pepsi World Cricket League Division Three later this year. USACA has offered to host the Division Three tournament later in 2014. In addition, with the national championships in Florida USACA can better utilize its partner, the West Indies Cricket Board, as an advisor and in support of the tournament and players.
“This is the largest national championship event in the history of US cricket. Gladstone Dainty the USACA president said. “We wish the City of Indianapolis the very best and respect that they did not feel able to help financially support the endeavor over the long run. This was a very expansive idea which needed an extremely big financial commitment.”
The ICC, the world governing body for cricket had also announced in the preceding week that it would not grant support funding for an additional national stadium in Indianapolis as the city was not prepared to commit rights and involvement in the sport over a long enough period to justify the multi-million dollar grant application.
Further, the provisions of the agreement allows for either party to terminate the agreement without cause and the City of Indianapolis has decided to exercise its right for reasons beyond what is being widely claimed by the City in the press. In effect USACA has accepted the termination and have waived its rights to a sixty-day notice as agreed with the City of Indianapolis with their announcement of the termination of the contract. However, USACA begs to disagree with the City of Indianapolis on meetings and communication, as there was an appointed project manager with frequent meetings and multiple open lines of communication. The key issue for the tournament was around funding and USACA notes that no significant funding sources had