THE STATES OF IT

At the ICC's board meeting on Thursday, there'll be the usual vol-au-vents and sandwich triangles that go hand in hand with the get-togethers of elite sporting organisations. There'll be a World Cup debrief, the usual discussions about the future direction of the game, ponderings about the legality of bowling actions and the like. But cricket's bigwigs will also be making a decision that could have a profound effect on the future of the game in one of the biggest potential growth areas on earth.

The governance of the game in the United States may not be the sexiest of subjects but stick with me. This week the ICC will be deciding whether to strip the USA Cricket Association (Usaca) of the right to run the game in the country, perhaps opening the way for the American Cricket Federation to take over. And if that sounds rather too much like the opening credits of an unpromising George Lucas film, then see it this way – imagine if the ICC was to strip the ECB of its control of club cricket, county cricket and the England team. That is what is at stake for the USA this week in Dubai.

Cricket has a long history in the US. In fact, cricket on US soil predates the formation of the US itself by more than a century. An international between the US and Canada, watched by maybe as many as 20,000 punters, took place as long ago as 1844. (For a fascinating rundown of the history of the game in the States, take a look at Raf Noboa y Rivera's excellent piece here.)

In 2001 the USA finished sixth in the ICC Trophy (ahead of Ireland) missing out on a place at the 2003 World Cup by a couple of wins. But the national side these days is in pretty poor shape, languishing in the World Cricket League Division Four alongside Denmark, Italy and Bermuda, and the governing body might not be the governing body by the end of the week.

The road to this point is a long and pretty shambolic one. Where did it all go wrong? Usaca has already been suspended twice by the ICC since the election of Gladstone Dainty as president in June 2003 – once in 2005 and once in 2007, with both suspensions coming as the result of issues about elections. The 2005 debacle prompted Malcolm Speed, then ICC chief executive, to write to Dainty that "we have seen numerous sporting organisations in various states of disarray throughout our period of involvement as sports administrators. We have never seen a sporting organisation that combines such great potential and such poor administration as Usaca."