Second XI

by Tim Wigmore

  Perhaps the end of the idea of expansion of cricket in America came in 1909 with the formation of the Imperial Cricket Conference. As the name suggests this organisation had its roots in the British Empire. The USA was not part of that particular club and they were not invited to join. As the organisation of international cricket was becoming more regimented the USA was excluded, despite the fact that many observers have said that the cricket that was taking place in America was of a higher standard than that being played in South Africa. While the Commonwealth roots of cricket are often seen as a catalyst for development, in this instance they actually prevented it. The ICC began as an inward-looking organisation and that hasn’t changed.

  The USA did not have a cricket association until the 1960s and it did not join the renamed International Cricket Conference until 1965, when it was among the first of the associate nations invited to join. Cricket had lost its battle, but mostly because those that had the chance to fight for it hadn’t bothered. Baseball was America’s game, cricket the reserve of immigrants who brought the game with them.

  While there were some Americans who took up the game they were the minority. Those that arrived in America from the Caribbean and the Asian sub-continent brought their love of the game with them and passed it on to their children. Pockets of English players created clubs to play the game, but facilities and opposition were limited. Even then there was no real interest in spreading the game to the population at large. Cricket was a little bit of home, sharing it with the locals was out of the question. By 2010 the then CEO of the USACA referred to cricket as an ‘underground’ sport.

  This is a history of missed opportunities and unfortunate happenstance for cricket in America. There was a love of the game in the middle of the 19th century, a steady influx of people from cricket-playing nations and a growth of interest in the game among Americans. It is a story of what might have been. America could have been a place where cricket was a mass participation sport. The reasons that this did not happen are manifold, far too many for it to easily overcome. But no one ever really tried.

  Cricket in America today is administered by the USACA. It has been this way since 1965. The formation of the USACA also saw the entry of the USA into what was then the International Cricket Conference. Despite the near 50 years that the USACA has existed there has still not been a resurgence in the fortunes of cricket in America. Instead the history of the USACA has been one of infighting and stagnation. Over the years those that run cricket in America have been accused of fiduciary failure on almost every level.

  While there are several centres of cricket, they are far from evenly spread. Florida and Texas have a large cricket-playing comhmunity whilst in other areas there is none. The size of America hasn’t helped with this insular administration. While other associate nations are relatively small and close-knit communities, in the USA the players are spread thinly and rarely come across each other. This has further cemented the desire to promote players that you know to the exclusion of others and made funding expansion even more difficult.

  While the ICC has long backed this organisation, anyone close to the USACA views it as either an obstacle to getting things done, a waste of time and money or a laughing stock. No matter how many times USACA gets backing from those running the world game it repays it with more ineptitude.

  From the start of 2013 until March 2014 the USACA was led by a new chief executive officer. Darren Beazley took the helm at the organisation and began a process of reform. His time in office was used to put together six pillars to rebuild American cricket. His strategic plan for cricket in the USA set about introducing sustainability and good governance.

  He was a well-qualified man for such a role, in fact he was approached to do it at the behest of Tim Anderson, the head of associate development at the ICC. Beazley had worked for the Western Australian Cricket Association, the Australian Football League and, most recently, been an executive in the energy business. He had a sporting background and business acumen.

  It was not in the least surprising that it took just 14 months for him to resign from a three-year contract. Speaking in January 2014 while still in the post, Beazley was upbeat about what he had planned for cricket in America. He believed that he was moving cricket in the USA in the right direction. He said he wanted to deal with the big issues. He talked of how fixing the dysfunctional nature of USACA was the big job. ‘When I arrived the biggest thing that I said to the board at the first meeting when I met with them in New York was that the big challenge for US cricket is the move from volunteerism to professionalism.’

  The biggest challenge for Beazley was to get the board to understand its role. Rather than running US cricket the board needs to be overseeing the activities of those who do. Volunteer administrators have run the sport as their personal fiefdom. There has been a vein of self-interest that has run through so many of the decisions that it has reached. Expansion of the game has all too often conflicted with the agenda of those in charge.

  Beazley made it very clear that the success or failure of his vision for cricket in America was this correction in governance structures. He talked of how the success or failure of the USACA as an organisation depended completely on the ability of the board to implement radical change in its governance structures. The motivation for doing this was to get locals playing cricket. Beazley said, ‘Until we get Americans playing the game and administering the game you are not going to reach your potential.’

  Stakeholders in American cricket have become so disenchanted with the administration of the USACA that it has led to the formation of a rival organisation. The American Cricket Federation was created by those who felt that cricket in America could be offered more than the USACA was giving them. The current man at the head of this rival entity is Jamie Harrison. He has long argued that the relationship that cricket in the USA has had with the ICC is one of a colony rather than that of an equal.

  According to Harrison, the USA is a marketplace to sell the existing product, not to allow America to develop its own. When you see USACA putting on showcase events between full members in Florida rather than getting kids playing the game it looks like Harrison may have a point. Those fixtures between established teams represent a great pay day for those that run the international game, but they leave very little in the way of legacy going forward. Once the circus has moved on there are empty beer cans and money for the organisers. American cricket has nothing.

  ‘This explains the ICC’s unwavering approval of USACA,’ Harrison said. ‘Which by being the ICC’s functionary in the American marketplace, does just enough to keep the ICC happy. If the ICC really cared about the USA becoming a cricket powerhouse, or even a major associate nation, it would have jettisoned USACA years ago. The ICC’s propping up of USACA is its ultimate statement of contempt for the American cricketer.’

  Many Americans who are keen to play the game are frozen out of participation in organised cricket. The cricket teams in America have become clubs, in every sense of the word, with restriction on who gains entry and who doesn’t. For cricket players outside of the USA this would seem remarkable. The criteria for getting a game for most teams in the UK is the ability to turn up. It is about getting a team out. And if you have too many players for one team you create a second.

  This sense of exclusivity is not just restricted to club cricket, but extends all the way up to the highest echelons of the sport in the United States. Author and US cricket blogger Tom Melville, writing for DreamCricket, relayed some of the frustrations faced by those that would like to see the game expand.

  ‘A long-time administrator of a local league had expectations that his son would one day play for the national team. But as we talked I asked that if he were truly committed to making cricket a more mainstream American sport was he willing to dedicate himself (at least in the long run) to seeing mainstream Americans one day holding his position, or seeing (again, in the long run) an American taking his son’s position on the national team
. A noticeably troubled expression came over his face once I turned the conversation in this direction.

  ‘But this is exactly the role the expat community must assume if cricket is to move forward, not a role of cultural preservation but transition, committed to a, perhaps slow, but dedicated, self-dissolving of cricket’s cultural insularity into the melting pot of mainstream American culture.’

  Americans who are not members of expat communities have long found that trying to get a game is an arduous task. E-mails to clubs go unanswered; phonecalls are full of obfuscation rather than excitement of getting someone new involved. Even when those contacting them are able to say that they have some skill at the game, having learnt it abroad or at another club, there is no enthusiasm to get them playing. A cricketer born in America explained it as follows:

  ‘They love saying they want cricket to spread to “mainstream Americans”. That’s garbage, because their actions demonstrate the exact opposite. This is their thing, they don’t want somebody coming along kicking them out of the team on a Saturday because this is the thing that they look forward to, they don’t want to share it.’

  This is the same problem that existed in the Antebellum era. Cricket has never wanted to expand. As much as people talk of growing the game, increasing take-up and creating a strong national team, their actions speak of the exact opposite. Remember, it is a stated aim of the ICC to grow the game, and the USA is one of the areas in which it is desperate for cricket to take hold. The ICC mission statement is pretty clear, ‘A bigger, better, global game targeting more players, more fans, more competitive teams.’

  Just as the Gentlemen of Philadelphia closed the door on potential expansion, so too do cricketers that have brought their love of the game with them from India, Pakistan and the West Indies. It remains a piece of home that they want to keep to themselves. When they take to the field on a Saturday they are not doing so in the hope of creating cricket as a sport with a national presence, they are doing so because this is something they love.

  While still in post as CEO, Beazley recognised this as an issue. He said he understood that the spread of cricket in the US was a ‘top-down approach’ where immigrants from a particular country come to America and play the game, but as adults. There is no attempt to teach their American-born children about the game. Instead cricket is something that Dad does on a Saturday, the youngsters might be taken along, but it is as disinterested spectators, not as active participants.

  There have been efforts to spread the game but more often than not that has come in the form of ‘sampling’. That is where you go into schools or clubs and give kids a chance to have a go. These often last for less than an hour and are unlikely to get kids desperate to play the game. Often at the end of the sampling session some cricket equipment is left behind, the issue is that no one has left behind the knowledge of how to use it once the trained cricket coaches have moved on to work with the next group. Beazley was keen that there is a more concerted approach to get youngsters playing the game, not just getting excited about the numbers that have held a bat for just a few minutes and calling that a success.

  So what of playing numbers? There are often massive figures quoted for the number of cricket fans, often circa ten million, living in America. Of those how many are playing the game? Beazley told me that the number of players is on the increase, but considering the playing base for a country with a population of over 300 million it is a paltry number. The target that Beazley’s six pillars set was 50,000 people playing cricket regularly by 2016.

  At the end of the 2012 cricket census carried out by the USACA there were 32,000 cricketers. By the end of 2013 that was up to 41,000. The target should be met, but there is still a huge concern over these playing numbers. ‘The issue that we have got is that in that 41,000 people there are only 980 kids aged 19 and under that are playing organised cricket,’ Beazley revealed.

  In one of the most populous countries on the planet fewer than 1,000 young people are playing organised cricket. The moves that Beazley discussed, and those that Jamie Harrison of the ACF are putting in place, should move this figure up. It is, however, representative of just how far cricket has to go in the United States to make any inroads. This is something of which Beazley was aware.

  Increasing the impact of US cricket is paramount to any success. It isn’t an easy path, but it is one that is built on foundations far more solid than the ambition to spontaneously turn America into a cricket-playing country by getting the West Indies and New Zealand to play a few games in Florida.

  Beazley understood that to grow the game cricket in America needs to have an identity of its own, not one that stems from the cricket structures of other countries. ‘There needs to be a brand for US cricket,’ Beazley told me. ‘The ICC will tell you there are ten million cricket fans within the US. I don’t know how many of those ten million are US cricket fans. When we played most recently in Dubai we had the game streamed live through our website. I expected the viewing numbers based on our experience with Under-19s up in Canada to be through the roof. And it hardly rose from the numbers that we got in Canada.’

  There are cricket fans in America but they are not fans of American cricket. They will identify themselves as lovers of the sport but they are not going to go out and buy a USA team jersey. They are not going to go out of their way to watch the team play matches, regardless of the standard of the cricket being played. There are fans of Pakistan, India, the West Indies and England in the US, many of them American citizens. However, their primary focus is on the team of their previous country, not their new one.

  This brings us back to the infighting and the politics of the board. While Beazley is very careful to paint his organisation in the best possible light there is an undercurrent of frustration. Speaking to other cricket-playing Americans there is a belief, whether true or not, that jobs and playing spots are sewn up based on membership of one immigrant community or another. There is the allegation that those of a West Indian background will push the case of their players while those originally from India or Pakistan will do the same. As with Mrs Kenwyn Williams, your personal connections are often a more compelling argument for your progression within the USACA than either playing or administrative ability.

  Perhaps the most pertinent case of this in recent times is Ryan Corns. Born in South Africa, Corns starred for the USA in the Under-19 World Cup qualifier in 2009. He was player of the tournament, taking wickets and scoring runs and outperforming players like Ireland’s Paul Stirling that have gone on to have significant success. Since then he has had injury issues, but nowhere near enough to justify his continued absence from the USA set-up. Some of those that have been following the game have alleged that his absence can be attributed to his origins.

  Peter Della Penna has said that Corns should be an automatic selection in national squads. ‘While he hasn’t always justified a place in the starting 11, he is good enough to be in a 15-man squad for ICC events. Why has he been left out? Because he is South African. In a land where you have the administration rife with self-interest there are interest groups.’

  Della Penna says that the cricket administration in the country is full of cliques, mostly supporting the claims of cricketers who have roots in Asia and the Caribbean. Corns’s South African heritage means there is no one fighting his corner based on his family background. ‘He only gets a game if there is somebody that rises above this stuff to get him in the team. But there aren’t enough people like that in USA cricket. There is no defined American cricket identity.’

  This insular attitude is apparent from the grassroots up in American cricket. Jamie Harrison of the ACF, when first in the post, talked of leaving the ICC altogether. When he took on the role in June 2013, Harrison said that this colonial relationship with the ICC brings far more harm than good. For Harrison the ICC is not interested in America beyond the dollars it can produce for the full member boards. It is an untapped resource, not dissimilar to the ones that the empires o
f the past exploited. It is the cricket fans in America that interests the ICC, not American cricket.

  For Harrison, the ICC’s actions betray any public pronouncements they may make about expansion, but his attitude and that of the ACF has thawed a little in recent times. The realisation that the ICC is the only chance that cricket in America has of gaining the legitimacy that it needs means the ACF stance has changed.

  In February 2014 the ACF issued a statement that said, ‘It has always been the intention of the American Cricket Federation [ACF], a recognised governing body for cricket in the United States, to seek a relationship with the International Cricket Council, as it is our belief that we can do justice to America’s associate membership, whereas USACA has only wasted it.’

  The ACF have come to see themselves as a viable alternative to the badly malfunctioning USACA, and they may well have a point. The issue will be that they cannot prove that they are any better placed to run the game in America than those currently in charge unless they are allowed to try. It is very easy to offer explanations of how you would do things differently while you are in opposition. You get to react in hindsight. The real test comes when you are the ones that have to make the decisions in the first place.

  The dust had settled on Beazley’s time in office by August 2014 and he said he is happy to talk about all that happened. In fact he seems happy in general. He makes it very clear that he isn’t some sort of disgruntled ex-employee out for revenge. He felt he had something to give USA cricket; he is an experienced sports administrator with four academic degrees. The problem he had was that while he tried doing what was best for cricket in America, there was resistance from ‘two or three key board members’. When asked to identify them he is reluctant, but he said that those who know USACA well would be able to join the dots.

  What he thought he was there to do, namely to make radical changes to the governance and management structures at the board, was not what the board wanted him to do. Beazley said that around the time of the AGM he had some serious doubts, ‘I just wasn’t convinced they were serious about making change.’