New York could host Full Member teams in August

Peter Della Penna

	The last time the USA hosted Full Member teams was at the Central Broward County Regional Park Cricket Stadium in Florida © CCUSA Enlarge

USA Cricket Association President Gladstone Dainty is attempting to arrange another set of matches involving New Zealand later this year that could potentially be played in New York.

"We're very seriously looking to do something in August," Dainty told ESPNcricinfo. "We don't have another [team] yet, but we're looking to do something in August." USA hosted New Zealand and Sri Lanka in Florida last May for a pair of Twenty20 games that took place shortly after the conclusion of the World Twenty20 in the West Indies.

While matches might be played in Florida, New York could also become a viable option after Dainty revealed plans to install a turf wicket at Brooklyn's Floyd Bennett Field. A USA XI played two matches against a West Indies XI captained by Brian Lara at the same ground in 2006. Floyd Bennett Field also shows up in the 2008 Joseph O'Neill novel Netherland, a fictional story about a man who uses cricket to help piece his life back together after 9/11.

"We're still working on getting this facility in New York going," Dainty said. "I'm hoping that it'll be ready by August." Dainty would not reveal how much money it would cost to make upgrades including the turf wicket at Floyd Bennett Field. It is also unknown if the costs would be covered by the group of investors behind Cricket Holdings America or if the money would be coming from a different source.

Dainty feels that the turf wicket would be ready for immediate use once it's put in place while the long term viability of the facility would be achieved by utilising the site for a domestic Twenty20 league in the USA. Dainty told ESPNcricinfo in December that CHA was hoping to start the proposed league by the summer of 2012.

USA played Jamaica in a series concurrent with the Sri Lanka and New Zealand matches in Florida last year, but Dainty did not know if something similar would be planned to involve USA for the next time around. Speaking about the team's fortunes at the ICC WCL Division Three in Hong Kong, Dainty acknowledged that the squad was underprepared for the tour and that it played a part in USA's last-place finish.

"The team to me didn't do very well in Hong Kong," Dainty said. "I'm not going to be the one that's blaming the team alone. For all of us, I would say that the team was not a very well prepared team. In terms of when they were playing, it was their offseason for most of them. Even during the national championships, I didn't see the energy from a lot of the players.

"I really think that when we did not get [Neil] McGarrell in the team that it hurt us a lot," Dainty said, in reference to the former West Indies Test spinner who was originally included in USA's squad. McGarrell had to be replaced when the ICC ruled him ineligible to play for USA based on residency requirements. "What happened in Hong Kong is not a failure of 14 or 17 guys; it's the program as a whole because they were not well prepared. It was US cricket as a whole. We needed additional funding for them to play some more."

Even though there is a significant amount of funding that USACA is set to receive from signing the deal with CHA, the bulk of it will not trickle down until later in the year.

"We have sources of funding now. I wouldn't say we have all the money right now, but we have sources now," Dainty said. "We've got enough funding to do what we want to do, but remember we didn't have a lot of funding to run the national championship, even the Under-19 tournament we had to put off. Since then we had one camp and then the funding came in."

Dainty was unhappy that Howard Johnson, the team's 46-year-old assistant coach, was inserted into the starting XI for the match against Papua New Guinea. Johnson was added to the squad after batsman Aditya Thyagarajan went down in the second game against Denmark with an injured knee. Johnson last played for the USA at the 2005 ICC Trophy in Ireland prior to his one-off appearance in Hong Kong.

"Based on what I knew in terms of Howard being included in the squad, we had a player who was injured and because of the logistics, we were more concerned about somebody emergency fielding," Dainty said, indicating that it did not make sense to fly in a replacement player from the USA. "And then you know … never did I think he would be put there as a player. If we knew that Howard was such a strong candidate to play, we should have known that before. I was as disappointed as anyone else."

"That should not be a reflection of Howard. Howard is a very nice and decent man and I don't think he should have been asked to do that at all. I don't know who should take responsibility but I hope it won't happen again. I've never been a micromanager, but this type of situation certainly needs more managing."