USA CRICKET BOARD
USA Cricket's Board of Directors have the ultimate responsibility for the direction of the National Governing Body.

USA Cricket’s mission is to govern, regulate, develop and promote all forms of cricket at all levels in the United States, and to enable U.S. cricketers to achieve sustained competitive excellence and successfully compete in national and international competition.

Through a diverse Board of Directors that has representation from most cricket stakeholder groups, USA Cricket will lead the sport to new heights by creating and administering value added programs to grow and develop the sport.

The previous USA Cricket Board of Directors has been in place since May 12th 2020, when former Team USA Men’s Captain Sushil Nadkarni joined the board as a league director.

The current Board now sits under the interim Chairmanship of Atul Rai and is comprised of directors from across the United States of America.

The USA Cricket Board is:

  • Atul Rai – Club Director (Interim Chair)

  • Avinash Gaje – Individual Director

  • Venu Pisike – Individual Director

  • Kuljit Singh-Nijjar Individual Director

  • Sushil Nadkarni – League Director

  • Nadia T. Gruny – Female Player Director

  • Srini Salver – Male Player Director

  • Catherine Carlson – Independent Director

  • Rohan Sajdeh – Independent Director

  • Paraag Marathe – Independent Director

<- Board Member Profiles ->

Atul Rai

Club Director - Interim Chair

Atul Rai is a long-standing American cricket administrator who has been involved in a wide variety of roles for more than two decades. Atul began the first Youth and Development programs nationally for cricket in America and has served as the President of the Southern California Cricket Association. In 2018 he was elected to the newly constituted USA Cricket Board and served on multiple committees including overseeing the founding of Minor League as the first chair of the Governing Council for Minor League Cricket.

Rai is a long term resident of the Southern California Area and currently lives in Santa Barbara, CA, he has been a private practicing dentist for more than 20 years.

Paraag Marathe

Independent Director

Paraag Marathe is President of the San Francisco 49ers Enterprises and Executive Vice President of Football Operations, where he has spent 20 years with the NFL franchise, serving in a variety of roles including as the club’s chief contract negotiator and overseeing the construction of Levi’s Stadium. He has played a pivotal role in helping the growth and development of the San Francisco 49ers over the last two decades, he has been captivated by cricket in recent years and the potential it holds across America.

Marathe is from the San Francisco Bay Area and went to UC-Berkeley before completing his MBA at Stanford University.

Avinash Gaje

Individual Director

Avinash Gaje is an avid cricketer, passionate fan and keen administrator of long standing. He is the founder and president of the New Jersey Softball Cricket League and worked as part of the steering committee that helped to unify American cricket under USA Cricket. His driving ambition and passion is to promote American cricket at all levels with a particular focus on talent discovery pathways for young cricketers. He has worked at various multinational organizations and currently owns an IT enterprise specialized in the pharmaceutical industry.

Gaje lives in Dayton, New Jersey and holds an MBA in Operations Management and a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from Bombay University.

Venu Pisike

Individual Director

Venu Pisike is an ardent Cricket lover, active player, and able administrator. He is the founder and Trustee of the Atlanta Cricket League , which has over 130 cricket clubs participating each year. He has been a strong advocate of youth cricket in Georgia, founding the Atlanta Cricket Academy which has a proud record of developing young cricketers. An Entrepreneur, he established Oracle Services Company ‘Ecovue Solutions, LLC’ in 2011 and currently helps several Big Corporations to implement and support Oracle Solutions in his role in Sales & Operations.

Pisike lives in Cumming, Georgia with his wife, son and daughter. He holds a Bachelor Degree in Civil Engineering from Gulbarga University.

Sushil Nadkarni

League Director

Sushil Nadkarni represented Team USA with great distinction for nine years beginning in 2006. He still holds the record for the highest-ever score for USA with 197 vs Suriname in 2008, the fastest hundred (101 not out off just 54 balls vs Cayman Islands), and the highest individual score of 223 in a National Tournament in 2008. He is the second leading run-scorer of all time in American colors, and, since his retirement from playing, he has been heavily involved in coaching and the development of youth cricket in the Houston region.

Nadkarni lives in Houston, Texas and graduated with a degree in Engineering and he now works in a global environmental consultancy in Texas, as a partner

Nadia Gruny

Female Player Director

Nadia Gruny first represented Team USA back in 2010 and has been one of the mainstays of the Women’s team over the last decade. In 2019, she became the first female USA player to score a T20I half-century. She is a great advocate of the women’s game, starting key female initiatives. Among them are the women's team she started when she moved to California which is now recognized as a hub for female cricket; and she established the country's first junior girls hardball tournament. She has a great sense of purpose and pride in representing the USA and is opening the pipeline of female junior cricketers to national teams.

Nadia lives in Florida and is a Senior Systems Analyst at Oracle. She has an MBA and a Masters in Sports Business from the University of Central Florida.

Srini Salver

Male Player Director

Srinivas Salver is a former batsman for Team USA Men’s team having played several times for America around 2018 representing USA in the CWI Super50 in the Caribbean. He played much of his cricket on the West Coast of the United States with the Vijeta cricket club in Southern California, alongside many national players. Apart from playing cricket, Srini is a level 2 certified cricket coach and has solid coaching experience with youth and women.
Salver lives in California, having moved to the USA more than a decade ago and he replaced Usman Shuja on the board.

He joined the board as a male player director in February 2020. Srini lives in the Bay Area and has an MBA and a master's in Engineering Management.

Catherine Carlson

Independent Director

Catherine Carlson is an experienced sports executive long established in the upper echelons of the sports industry. She is currently the Senior Vice-President of Revenue and Strategy for the Philadelphia Eagles. Before that Carlson had been working 11 seasons for the Orlando Magic. As Senior Vice President of Corporate Partnerships & Premium Activation, she was a key member of the senior leadership team and was responsible for driving strategy and revenue for the Magic, affiliated properties and events, while also leading efforts to grow the Magic's corporate sponsor base.

Carlson now lives in Pennsylvania, with her Australian roots she is a cricket lover and brings a huge amount of experience in American Sport.

Rohan Sajdeh

Independent Director

Rohan Sajdeh is a Senior Partner and Managing Director of the Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Rohan is BCG’s Global Consumer & Retail Practice leader and the Global co-leader of its Sports sector. He has a 25-year track record of growth-creation and business transformation for some of the world’s leading consumer-facing and sports businesses. Rohan has deep ties to Cricket, having played at a first-class level in the UK and he led BCG’s work with the ICC that contributed to the current Test Championship model.

Sajdeh lives in Chicago. He has a Bachelor of Business from the University of Technology, Sydney, an MBA from Northwestern University and a Masters of Philosophy in International Relations from the University of Cambridge, UK.

Kuljit Singh Nijjar

Individual Director

Kuljit Singh Nijjar has served cricket for over 20 years within the USA with extensive experience managing Teams/Leagues/Inter-city tournaments across all ages with instrumental success. Kuljit was one of the founding members and pillars of the Dallas Cricket League in Texas. In 2012, Dallas Youth Cricket League (DYCL) was instituted to promote youth cricket and created alliances with other youth cricket areas like Atlanta, Houston, New Jersey, St Louis and the Bay Area to promote the growth of youth cricket across America.

Nijjar has been living in Dallas since 1998 and currently works as Senior Systems Engineer at Verizon. He has a Masters Degree from University of South Florida.