USA Cricket Association Takes Issue With Ballard Administration's Termination Of 3-Year Agreement

The USA Cricket Association issued a press release today indicating that the organization is moving its national tournament to an international stadium in Broward County, Florida equipped with floodlights in response to the Ballard administration's announcement late Friday that the City had terminated its 3-year agreement with USACA to host its national cricket tournament for the next three years. USACA's project manager for the cricket tournament, Sunil Kumar, took issue with the Ballard administration's claim that lack of communications with USACA around sponsorship for the first planned tournament in August at the International Sports Park that Ballard blew millions of dollars constructing solely to host this event was the cause of the break-up.

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 . . .

USACA begs to disagree with the City of Indianapolis on meetings and communication, as there was an appointed project manager with frequent meetings and open lines of communication. The key issue for the tournament was around funding and USACA notes that no significant funding sources had been identified to recognize the high costs of hosting a tournament in Indianapolis.

In other words, the slugs at USACA are already behaving like the NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS and the NHL whose owners now think it is the duty of the taxpayers in every host city to underwrite the bulk of their operating costs. Just consider Broward County's supposed gain in this ordeal a big win for Indianapolis taxpayers, who Mayor Greg Ballard came dangerously close to forcing to spend even more than the millions he's already wasted on the International Sports Park just so the City could host cricket events to appease a handful of his Indian-born campaign contributors who receive minority contracts to perform work for the City in exchange for campaign contributions.

Political corruption and cricket go hand in hand in India. Backers of cricket found an easily corrupted politician in Mayor Ballard all too willing to blow millions of tax dollars to appease them. Ballard will now turn his attention to ensuring that another one of his large campaign contributors, Turkish businessman Ersal Ozdemir, gets his $87 million publicly-funded soccer stadium for his Indy Eleven minor league soccer team. Ozdemir, of course, has been classified as a phony MBE so Ballard could funnel hundreds of millions of dollars in city contracts to his business and claim he's helping out minority contractors.