United States of America Cricket Association v ESPN Cricinfo

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The United States of America Cricket Association (USACA) Facebook administrator has thrown a wobbly. Read through their comments on this thread relating to a Cricinfo piece about the organisation written by Peter Della Penna.

Essentially, the administrator believes that Della Penna and the managing editor of digital media at ESPN, Martin Williamson, are ‘bloggers’ and therefore not protected by law should they criticise USACA. They accuse Williamson of being a ‘fly by night’ journalist on the grounds that he wasn’t a journalist until 1996.

They do a line in discardation which even Giles Clarke would be jealous of:

“Today for the first time in USA Cricket history. The fake press has been tasked and is no longer relevant. This page is the official page of USA Cricket. All news updates and concerns should be addressed here. Martin, Peter etc. have been made obsolete.”

At one point an informant is ‘silenced’ and they consider 2,900 page views to constitute ‘going viral’.

“By advertising standards we have blow the top off most internet cricket sites.”

However, we can’t choose between these two as a our favourite line:

“I am an American and no one gets the best of me.”

Or:

“you have never called me. I return all calls. I get thousands.”

Thanks to Jayne and others for pointing this out to us.

DON'T BE LIKE GATT!

Mike Gatting wasn't receiving the King Cricket email when he dropped that ludicrously easy chance against India in 1993.

Coincidence?

Why risk it when it's so easy to sign up?

16 comments

  1. “You have never called me. I return all calls. I get thousands.”
    I am using that today!

    1. I wish I knew at which point in the thread this post appeared. Not too far below it, Kenwyn Williams contradicts himself totally by commenting that he couldn’t possibly reply to every email he receives, precisely because he gets thousands. I laughed out loud. The entire thread is the funniest thing I’ve read in a long time.

  2. That’s two consecutive articles that link to websites I can’t look at while at work. It’s a disgrace. How is a man supposed to argue forcefully on the internet without first getting a clear and detailed understanding of the matters at hand?

    Oh, I remember now. Broad looks a proper pillock in that hat? And who does this administrator think he is calling Our Queen a two-faced whore? As for immigration and the EU…

    1. No twitter or facebook? Watch out Bert – they’ll be banning porn next. That’s when you know you have to quit.

  3. Aside from not agreeing with USACA’s Dear Leader, I’ve yet to fathom out what Della Penna has done wrong.

    Oh, wait…

  4. My favourite is “At the end of it all; my tolerance has been meet!”(maniacal laugh) (mine)

    On a serious note, with the current administration what hope is there for Cricket in the US? And to think there might have been an international standard ground within driving distance of my house. (cries)

    1. Sadly none. Over here, taekwondo and wrestling are run by their own little fiefdoms too, neither of whom seem to have anything but their own interests as priorities.

  5. I don’t understand why people have to spend time and effort toward building a cricket structure in the US. They have their own sporting events year-round, and it’s quite pointless to try and force something into their culture. Instead we could concentrate on building up grass-roots cricket in “associate” nations like Ireland (who we only care about when the 50-over World Cup is around the corner).

    1. Why don’t we put all of the time and effort into cricket in China?

      It’s only a matter of time before they work out table-tennis is a bit crap. It only took me about 16 years and I reckon I’m slower than most.

  6. The facebook posts by USACA – which are made by Kenwyn Williams, the executive secretary – are deliberately libellous in connection with myself and Peter Della Penna. He is fully aware of my CV – which is available for anyone to see on Linkedin – and that I have worked for various organisations such as Sky Sports, Wisden, Cricinfo and ESPN – but despite that has repeatedly published false and misleading posts aimed at undermining my credibility.

    Despite numerous requests, Williams has not cited one example of what he objects to in Peter’s original article. He does, hwoever, insist that Peter is legally obliged to hand over full details of all his sources. This is clearly wrong, a face all the more surprising given Williams is a paralegal.

    1. Deliberately libellous? We had it down as being just angrily libellous – the kind of thing a child does when metaphorically cornered.

      We used to live with someone who once asked a schoolmate whether he was being kept down a year (he was). This kid’s response was: “No, you are.”

      The comments on that Facebook page seem cut from the same cloth.

  7. KC, can we have a Gary Keedy post? We’re all waiting with baited breath to read what you think of the situation.

    And when I say baited breath, I mean barely contained apathy.

    1. Why does everyone seem to think we do requests?

      We mentioned him in this week’s Twitter thing at Cricinfo. It was something about Coffee Club.

  8. The thing that made me happy about this story is that I discovered that the USACA president is called Gladstone Dainty.

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