Seven parties filed objections to USA Cricket's ACE bankruptcy settlement, including a rival group offering a competing bid. The case now turns on whether the judge forces an open competitive process.
USA Cricket's bankruptcy case was supposed to be a formality. ACE, the ownership group behind Major League Cricket, stepped in with a rescue package. The trustee backed it. The court was expected to rubber-stamp it and move on. Then seven separate parties filed objections, and what looked like a quiet legal conclusion may turn into the most consequential governance fight in American cricket history.
The most striking of those objections didn't just push back on the deal. It submitted a competing bid.
The National Cricket League, a private rival organization known as NCL, landed the most explosive filing. The trustee had explained to the court that ACE was the only viable funder available, which was the central justification for moving straight to approval without running a competitive process. NCL's response was blunt: that claim isn't accurate, because we have money and we can bid too.
The trustee chose a winner before the race even started.
That framing cuts to the core of what the other objectors are arguing. Former USA Cricket chairman Vinu Pesike, two of his board allies, and a former counsel-turned-creditor all filed separately, and their objections converge on the same concern. The ACE deal, as structured, hands ACE and Willow long-term control over US cricket, including 50-year media rights, without any competitive bidding process having been run at all. The sport's future in America gets decided in a discussion room, not a competitive market.
The court now has three realistic options. It can approve the ACE deal as the trustee presented it. It can delay or deny the deal outright. Or it can force ACE and NCL into a genuine competitive process and let both bids be evaluated on their merits.
50-year media rights, decided without a competitive process. That's what the objectors want the court to revisit.
That third option is the one worth watching. A forced competitive process would reopen negotiations that the trustee considered closed, create genuine uncertainty about who ends up controlling American cricket's infrastructure, and potentially surface better terms for creditors and the sport itself.
This isn't just a bankruptcy proceeding anymore. Whoever emerges from this hearing with control of USA Cricket's assets will shape how the sport is governed, broadcast, and commercially developed in the United States for decades. The 50-year media rights figure alone signals how much is at stake through this single court decision.
The judge's ruling will determine whether that decision gets made through a process anyone can call fair, or whether the trustee's preferred outcome simply stands. Cricket in America has had a governance problem for years. This case may be another moment that either entrenches the old pattern or helps to put cricket on the right track. We shall see!
