Former Everton chief executive Keith Wyness has taken on the task of developing a Twenty20 cricket competition in the United States.
The 54-year-old has been appointed head of Cricket Holdings America, a joint operation run by New Zealand Cricket and the USA Cricket Association, which hopes to grow the game in America.
An initial launch, which was scheduled for this summer, has been postponed for 12 months in order to allow Wyness enough time to put proper infrastructure in place.
"It is very rare for an opportunity as exciting as this to come along within sport, to have a clean page to develop what I believe will become a major sport in the USA," said Wyness.
"Cricket is already the second biggest sport in the world and the USA is the biggest commercial market for sport. My role is to marry those two factors together and there is plenty of potential and opportunity to do that.
"Cricket is already played extensively across the United States with close to 50,000 regular players and it is the world's second biggest consumer of internet cricket behind India."
The Scot, who also worked on the 2000 Sydney Olympics, will be responsible for selling franchises, as well as television rights for the new competition.
