Back in 2000, Jag Mohan Dalmiya (then president of the ICC) announced that he will make the United States as a priority market for cricket expansion. More than two decades have passed, and there has been no growth at the grassroot levels. US team is entirely made up of former U-19 and first class cricketers from India, Pakistan and West Indies. And the USACA is one of the most corrupt cricket boards in the word. Over the years, more hundreds of millions of USD in funds were provided by the ICC, and most of this remains untraced and unaccounted.
On one side ICC is giving boards like usa millions of usd for cricket development with no progress while countries which have huge potential for cricket are ignored by ICC like Kenya. The focus should be on countries where there are native players who play cricket not countries like UAE, Oman thay make up team of expats.
Can anyone explain to me why this is happening? I really have no idea why the ICC is still funding them. There is no point in doing that because they are not improving at all in my opinion. They are just taking the money and doing who knows what. I don't think this money is actually being used for the improvement of cricket in the USA.
Who will tell the ICC? I am not expecting any big changes for the next cycle (2024-31) as well. It pains me that what happened to Kenya is repeating with other associates as well. BTW, the African qualifiers for the next T20 World Cup are ongoing right now. A total of 16 teams are taking part and almost all of them are majority native. I enjoyed watching some of the matches in Fancode. The overall quality shows a continuous improvement. Some of the newcomers such as Mali and Seychelles are struggling, but I am sure that they will also catch up.
Obviously, no one is in a position to speak anything to the ICC. Any board that wishes to address the ICC has to be one of the top 4 boards. Umm, but they are not intending to do that. And if any smaller cricket board decides to say anything, they are not going to be heard of by the ICC. Cricket has been played for a long time. But it's a shame that we still have to see a cricket world cup being played by only 12-16 teams.