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<span style="font-weight: bold">Off-field intrigue puts game of cricket in legal spotlight</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">Is cricket in America corrupt? A lawsuit filed in California says yes, claiming the leadership of the sport’s Miami Beach-based governing body is trying to rig its presidential election.</span>
Source: Miami Miami Herald
Writer: ADAM H. BEASLEY
Intrigue, alleged election-rigging and an insurgent presidential campaign waged by a mega-rich challenger against an entrenched, embattled incumbent:
Who knew cricket could be so entertaining?
The world’s second-most popular sport might be an afterthought in the United States, but as a federal lawsuit recently filed in California shows, the game’s knack for stirring up controversy is second to none.
Gladstone Dainty, 60, is the president of the United States of America Cricket Association — the sport’s governing body, whose headquarters is in Miami Beach — and his critics say he’s been up to no good.
Dainty stands accused of a Machiavellian plot to remain in office by repeatedly delaying national elections and stripping the voting rights of two-thirds of the association’s membership — many of whom he viewed as antagonistic to his reelection campaign.
Among those penalized: the Florida Southeast Cricket League, a 19-club association whose membership stretches from Royal Palm Beach to Miami.
Cricket is particularly popular in South Florida with its thriving Caribbean population, and some 400 players compete in FSCL’s amateur leagues. But they have no voice in this weekend’s presidential election, and league president Rizwan Mohammed says it’s payback for voting against Dainty last time around.
“This is a gross injustice,” said Mohammed, a 45-year-old Citibank executive from Coconut Creek. “The U.S.A. Cricket Association has hijacked the democratic process.”
Not so, Dainty and USACA say. The administration claims it has acted in good faith, motivated out of fear that the all-powerful International Cricket Council would suspend the association and strip its funding if the traditionally rag-tag American leagues don’t come into code. It may be a moot point anyway, as ICC has temporarily suspended USACA’s funding grants for failing hold an annual general meeting 2011 — although Dainty told the Miami Herald Wednesday that he expects the problem will be rectified by next week.
This battle comes to a climax Thursday, when a federal judge in California’s Bay Area will decide in an emergency hearing whether to forbid USACA from going forward with its national election as scheduled Saturday, or put it on hold until the leagues said to be disenfranchised are allowed to participate.
“The bottom line is we have proven that compliance [with ICC standards] is real,” said Dainty, a Washington, D.C.-based accountant who owns a home near Wellington in Palm Beach County. “We have things that our members have to do in order to be compliant. The ICC doesn’t play.”
Furthermore, USACA — a nonprofit organization — could open itself up to tax and insurance fraud if it knows certain members are out of bounds, but does nothing about it.
But Ram Varadarajan, the multimillionaire outsider who is challenging Dainty for president and is responsible for the lawsuit, says Dainty and his board have been selective with enforcement, punishing rivals while giving allies a pass.
“Openness and fair play have not been an adjective one would use to describe our current president,” said “Good governance has been lacking.”
Varadarajan, an innovator in network security from Cupertino, Calif., has combined legal forces with the California Cricket Academy — one of 32 leagues stripped of their voting rights by last fall — to take on Dainty, who remains in office even though his three-year term was scheduled to expire a year ago in March.
They claim that USACA repeatedly delayed holding a vote after Dainty grew nervous he would lose to Varadarajan, and then suspended certain leagues for no other reason than to stack the deck.
Will Allcott, an attorney representing USACA in the suit, dismissed as “flat-out wrong” any allegation that the moves were politically motivated.
His firm filed a response late last week asking the court to disregard the injunction request, claiming the dispute is a matter that should be resolved through the association’s internal appeals process.
“There’s no intent to exclude everyone,” Alcott said. “The delay in elections was to give noncompliant leagues a chance to come into compliance. But these are the rules that they agreed on in their constitution.”
Cricket — the British sport similar to baseball — has been played in this country for centuries, but was never embraced by Americans. Yet with the steady arrival of immigrants from cricket-friendly countries like India, Pakistan and nations in the West Indies, interest in the sport here has grown.
The game is played mostly on the amateur level in this country, although Lauderhill’s Central Broward Regional Park, a $70 million complex that opened in 2007, is one of few facilities nationally capable of hosting major professional cricket competitions.
The ICC, which regulates the sport globally and hosts events like the cricket World Cup, recognizes the United States as an associate (or junior varsity) member. That relationship has at times been tested by what some see as the nation’s cavalier attitude toward rules and norms.
Those suspicions bubbled over in 2007, when elected USACA officials — including Dainty — postponed and tried to manipulate the results of a contested election, forcing league members and the ICC to intervene, the lawsuit states. The international body suspended USACA until it codified its rules into a written constitution, which dictated clear deadlines for regional and national elections.
Five years later, Dainty is accused of repeating history.
“Those that are in power right now are manipulating those rules in order to stay in power,” said attorney David Marroso, who is representing the plaintiffs. “It’s not any more complex than that.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/09/v-...l#storylink=cpy
<span style="font-weight: bold">Off-field intrigue puts game of cricket in legal spotlight</span>
<span style="font-style: italic">Is cricket in America corrupt? A lawsuit filed in California says yes, claiming the leadership of the sport’s Miami Beach-based governing body is trying to rig its presidential election.</span>
Source: Miami Miami Herald
Writer: ADAM H. BEASLEY
Intrigue, alleged election-rigging and an insurgent presidential campaign waged by a mega-rich challenger against an entrenched, embattled incumbent:
Who knew cricket could be so entertaining?
The world’s second-most popular sport might be an afterthought in the United States, but as a federal lawsuit recently filed in California shows, the game’s knack for stirring up controversy is second to none.
Gladstone Dainty, 60, is the president of the United States of America Cricket Association — the sport’s governing body, whose headquarters is in Miami Beach — and his critics say he’s been up to no good.
Dainty stands accused of a Machiavellian plot to remain in office by repeatedly delaying national elections and stripping the voting rights of two-thirds of the association’s membership — many of whom he viewed as antagonistic to his reelection campaign.
Among those penalized: the Florida Southeast Cricket League, a 19-club association whose membership stretches from Royal Palm Beach to Miami.
Cricket is particularly popular in South Florida with its thriving Caribbean population, and some 400 players compete in FSCL’s amateur leagues. But they have no voice in this weekend’s presidential election, and league president Rizwan Mohammed says it’s payback for voting against Dainty last time around.
“This is a gross injustice,” said Mohammed, a 45-year-old Citibank executive from Coconut Creek. “The U.S.A. Cricket Association has hijacked the democratic process.”
Not so, Dainty and USACA say. The administration claims it has acted in good faith, motivated out of fear that the all-powerful International Cricket Council would suspend the association and strip its funding if the traditionally rag-tag American leagues don’t come into code. It may be a moot point anyway, as ICC has temporarily suspended USACA’s funding grants for failing hold an annual general meeting 2011 — although Dainty told the Miami Herald Wednesday that he expects the problem will be rectified by next week.
This battle comes to a climax Thursday, when a federal judge in California’s Bay Area will decide in an emergency hearing whether to forbid USACA from going forward with its national election as scheduled Saturday, or put it on hold until the leagues said to be disenfranchised are allowed to participate.
“The bottom line is we have proven that compliance [with ICC standards] is real,” said Dainty, a Washington, D.C.-based accountant who owns a home near Wellington in Palm Beach County. “We have things that our members have to do in order to be compliant. The ICC doesn’t play.”
Furthermore, USACA — a nonprofit organization — could open itself up to tax and insurance fraud if it knows certain members are out of bounds, but does nothing about it.
But Ram Varadarajan, the multimillionaire outsider who is challenging Dainty for president and is responsible for the lawsuit, says Dainty and his board have been selective with enforcement, punishing rivals while giving allies a pass.
“Openness and fair play have not been an adjective one would use to describe our current president,” said “Good governance has been lacking.”
Varadarajan, an innovator in network security from Cupertino, Calif., has combined legal forces with the California Cricket Academy — one of 32 leagues stripped of their voting rights by last fall — to take on Dainty, who remains in office even though his three-year term was scheduled to expire a year ago in March.
They claim that USACA repeatedly delayed holding a vote after Dainty grew nervous he would lose to Varadarajan, and then suspended certain leagues for no other reason than to stack the deck.
Will Allcott, an attorney representing USACA in the suit, dismissed as “flat-out wrong” any allegation that the moves were politically motivated.
His firm filed a response late last week asking the court to disregard the injunction request, claiming the dispute is a matter that should be resolved through the association’s internal appeals process.
“There’s no intent to exclude everyone,” Alcott said. “The delay in elections was to give noncompliant leagues a chance to come into compliance. But these are the rules that they agreed on in their constitution.”
Cricket — the British sport similar to baseball — has been played in this country for centuries, but was never embraced by Americans. Yet with the steady arrival of immigrants from cricket-friendly countries like India, Pakistan and nations in the West Indies, interest in the sport here has grown.
The game is played mostly on the amateur level in this country, although Lauderhill’s Central Broward Regional Park, a $70 million complex that opened in 2007, is one of few facilities nationally capable of hosting major professional cricket competitions.
The ICC, which regulates the sport globally and hosts events like the cricket World Cup, recognizes the United States as an associate (or junior varsity) member. That relationship has at times been tested by what some see as the nation’s cavalier attitude toward rules and norms.
Those suspicions bubbled over in 2007, when elected USACA officials — including Dainty — postponed and tried to manipulate the results of a contested election, forcing league members and the ICC to intervene, the lawsuit states. The international body suspended USACA until it codified its rules into a written constitution, which dictated clear deadlines for regional and national elections.
Five years later, Dainty is accused of repeating history.
“Those that are in power right now are manipulating those rules in order to stay in power,” said attorney David Marroso, who is representing the plaintiffs. “It’s not any more complex than that.”
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/04/09/v-...l#storylink=cpy
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