Former Everton and Aberdeen football chief executive Keith Wyness was on Friday handed the imposing job of trying to convert the United States to Twenty20 cricket.

The 54-year-old will be responsible for the delivery of a business plan which will include the sale of Twenty20 franchises for a league planned to start in the summer of 2013, Cricket Holdings America LLC (CHALLC) announced.

Wyness has extensive experience in managing the business of elite-level sport, having worked on the Sydney Olympics of 2000 and as the chief executive of English Premier League club Everton and Aberdeen in Scotland.

“I am delighted to take up the role of Chief Executive Officer of Cricket Holdings America,” said Wyness.

“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.

“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.”