by Tim Wigmore
A job opportunity came up that meant Beazley had a chance to return to Perth, a move that his family were keen for him to take. The timing seemed right and he decided to move on. He said his family were aware of his long-term concerns about the future of USACA. While he was there one of his two staff members was laid off, with the board citing financial constraints as the issue. Despite the assurances that the proposed Twenty20 league that has been talked of for years bringing in big bucks, nothing ever materialised.
He said that it was not an easy decision, but one he is comfortable with. He wishes US cricket well but he is not convinced that the board wants the same. ‘I was serious about what I was doing; I am just not convinced that USACA were serious about becoming professional.’
There are few people better placed to talk about what is stopping cricket’s growth in America than the man who was tasked to run it by the ICC and the USACA. He said the world governing body is the biggest stumbling block facing cricket in the USA. It doesn’t have the will to do anything about the USACA’s intransigence and refusal to change.
It was the ICC’s global development manager who was instrumental in getting Beazley into the post. Beazley told me if it was not for the intervention of Anderson he would not have taken the job. After his first interview he was ‘singularly unimpressed’ with the USACA board. Anderson persuaded him to take the chance. ‘At the end of the day, USACA has been going since 1965. What have they achieved in 50 years? It is staggering how little they have achieved. Look what I did in 15 months.’
People were telling Beazley that they were buying into him, but they were not convinced that USACA had the capability to go with him. Cricket’s brand is tarnished. The combination of bad experiences of dealing with the USACA and the stories of match and spot fixing around the world meant that people were turning away from the sport even before they had given it a chance. He felt that his credibility was on the line, but there was not the same commitment from others.
‘The answer lies in getting in good administrators that have got the experience and understand the market and can work with mainstream sport. And that has to be led by the ICC. You have the right to protect the sovereign borders of a governing body so long as they are acting in the best interests of cricket. I think it has been clearly established now that neither USACA nor the ACF nor anyone else are acting in anyone’s interests other than their own.’
Beazley said the ICC has intervened in other countries when it has needed to, citing Zimbabwe as an example. The issue isn’t one of power; it is a lack of willingness. The market is there for cricket to make inroads, especially if moves are made to Americanise it. As much as that may be anathema to the traditionalists, finding a way for the game to take root may require some changes. American cricket doesn’t have to be exactly the same as what is played on village greens in England, just as alley and tape ball cricket in the sub-continent is a vibrant alternative. To grow, the sport needs to make sacrifices.
So what kind of person ends up playing cricket for the United States of America? How do you end up being a good enough sportsman to hack it at that level, but choose a minority sport as your path?
It is rarely people who were born in America. It is people that have come from cricket-playing countries and made the USA their home. Of the current crop of USA players, the most successful and exciting talent is Steven Taylor. He is almost unique in that he was born in the USA. What is disappointing is that he wants to play for the West Indies.
Speaking to the Jamaican Observer while in the Caribbean for a training camp he was unequivocal about his ambitions. He said, ‘The main reason I am in Jamaica now is to qualify myself to make the Jamaica team and to play for the West Indies.’
So immigrants are where the USA finds its players, and one such person was Usman Shuja. A Pakistani by birth, he came to America as a 19-year-old to study in Texas. When he headed to America he thought that was the end of his dream of playing professional cricket. He was on the fringes of the Pakistan Under-19 squad when the chance to go to America arose.
When he travelled back to Pakistan for the holidays he got to play at a pretty high standard. He bowls quick and he got to play the game with some real stars, at one point turning out for Misbah-ul-Haq’s club. He showed enough promise to get a visit from Waqar Younis to his house for a chat about what is needed to be a top-class fast bowler. This was in late 2000 during a Christmas break. Usman’s father got hold of Waqar’s number and the Pakistani great showed up for a chat with the young man. Playing cricket at this standard left Usman with a desire to play as competitively as possible. Maybe there was a way for him to both study and play.
Then 11 September 2001 happened. Immediately trips from the US back to Pakistan started to become much more difficult. Travelling from Pakistan back to the US was even harder. There was a decision to be made. Would Usman pursue his dream of playing cricket professionally, or would he try and get hold of the ethereal American dream that lay in a land where the chances of a world-class cricketer turning up on your doorstep were remote?
Usman chose America but he did not give up on cricket altogether. He had a trip to Australia in an attempt to improve his cricket, and then once back in the USA he started getting in his car and driving the three hours from his home in Austin to Dallas and Houston to get a game. Both cities had a pretty well established cricket infrastructure. There were about 40 teams, and according to Usman some of them were actually a decent standard. The best players from Dallas and Houston would feed into the Central West team which goes on to compete against other regions.
Usman bowled with enough pace that it did not take long for people to notice him. Balls flying past batsmen’s noses are enough to get even the most disinterested observer to sit up and take note. He made it into one of the better Dallas teams and then on to the Central West. Even before he had completed his seven-year qualifying period to become an American player he was given a spot in a ‘probables’ squad of around 30 of the most promising players. From there he was selected for the national team once his qualification period was complete.
Many have said that the selection process for the USA teams is opaque and unwieldy. Usman said he always knew where he stood when making his way into the side; ‘In my experience the process was very transparent and very fair and very clear to me. I had to play for either Dallas or Houston, I had to perform on those teams, and then for the Central West team to get recognition for the US.’
Since then he has been told that newer players have not found it anywhere near as clear. The route map for getting to play for the USA has never been more muddled than it is today. ‘Things have gone very confused. I have talked to a lot of people, a lot of youngsters that want to play for the US team and the today the way that you make it into the national set-up is not very obvious or very clear.’
Currently there is no selection process. There is no defined pool of players or any criteria that a youngster would be able to tick off on his path to the national set-up. The rise of shadow and unofficial leagues has made the waters even murkier. Players do not know which runs count and which don’t. Some would say that only playing for an official USACA league would count, others contend that runs and wickets are just that, a measure of your performance regardless of where they were achieved.
However, if you are a person the selectors know and like, you can get a game irrespective of where you ply your trade. In theory playing outside the auspices of the USACA you cannot be selected. In practice things are not that straightforward. There is no real oversight of the selectors. What they say goes.
The problem the selectors face is that the majority of teams are poor. A player could score thousands of runs or take hundreds of wickets but what does that actually mean? Usman told me it doesn’t mean a lot.
‘You couldn’t just put that guy in front of Ireland and expect him to succeed because the gap is so humongous that they are bound to fail. They could end up picking a guy from the Seattle league for an i
nternational tournament and he won’t be prepared. I got lucky because I had to work through the ranks. That is not what happens anymore. In the last five or six years there hasn’t been a national tournament.’
There are lots of issues but Usman is clear about the solution. Be smart, get people playing the game. ‘There has to be a smarter approach to cricket in the USA as it is not a cricket-playing country which is playing the game to increase the quality of your players.’
So while increasing the number of Americans playing needs to be the long-term goal, perhaps using the immigrant population to spread the game is the answer. Rather than allow cricket to remain a fractured hotchpotch of leagues, shadow leagues, pick-up games and sampling sessions, the governing body needs to create some homogeny. Whether it remains the USACA or if it is usurped by the ACF, whoever is running cricket needs to make everyone welcome.
Between 2012 and 2014 three former West Indies cricketers qualified to play for the USA. The most recent is Jermaine Lawson who played for the West Indies between 2002 and 2005, and appeared in county cricket from time to time. Lawson’s selection for the ICC World Cricket League Three tournament in Malaysia in October 2014 caused some consternation as he has not appeared in a USACA-sanctioned tournament since 2011. Again, the question of which performances count is raised.
The other news that arose from the same squad announcement that saw Lawson picked was that Usman Shuja was back in the USA fold. He was delighted to be back. In the first game against Bermuda he became the leading 50-over wicket-taker in the history of the US national team. He went past the previous record of former USA captain Zamin Amin.
The lead-up to the tournament was typical of the USACA and its organisational skills. A planned warm-up tour to Jamaica had to be cancelled as the board could not afford for them to go. There was a hastily arranged practice in New York but not all of the team were able to attend. Coach Roy Singh would be meeting most of the players for the first time when they arrived in Malaysia.
The 2014 USACA national championship was no less chaotic. The event was supposed to be in Indianapolis but the USACA fell out with local authorities and at the last minute the tournament was moved to Florida and plagued by poor weather.
The semi-finals couldn’t take place and several players walked away from the tournament before its conclusion, despite having travelled at their own expense. This compared very unfavourably with the ACF’s national championship in Orlando, which went off without a hitch. In the aftermath of this Orville Hall, an inductee to the USA cricket hall of fame, said that the future of the sport was with the ACF.
Infighting and politics has been allowed to fester for too long, an inclusive approach is what is needed. Ultimately the question needs to be why the massive cricket-loving immigrant population are not interested in the achievements of the USA cricket team. This is a team made up of people just like them, newcomers to America that love the game. Yet there seems to be nothing more than a passing interest in them.
Subash Jayaraman is a USA-based cricket blogger and podcaster. He is an immigrant from India and brought his love of the game with him. He told me that following cricket in America involves a lot of sacrifice, but more than that it is a connection to the old country. Cricket is something that is about where you are from, not where you live now. While there is a USA cricket team, it is not one that engenders a real sense of belonging.
This in a way is strange and also understandable. Strange in that there is no connection despite the team representing the average cricket fan, and understandable in that the team is not one that has achieved any on-field success. The way that cricket is administered in the US means that this is unlikely to change any time soon.
Assimilation is the key for an immigrant to the US. You want to fit in, to prove your Americanness. Having a love for some strange sport that belongs to America’s former colonial masters is no way to prove your love for the US of A. It is the kind of thing you have to leave behind when you start on the route to integration with your new neighbours.
To be a cricket fan in the USA is not easy. It involves paying for subscription services that often only stream online. Almost every match is either during the working day or in the middle of the night. Actually, the middle of the night is far and away the most likely. That takes commitment. It involves having to go out of your way to find coverage. It isn’t going to just appear on your TV while you channel-surf of an evening. You need to be committed enough to search.
Subash points to the lack of sponsorship as just yet another example of failing to make the most of opportunities that exist to spread the game to outside these immigrant communities. He said companies and corporations are falling over themselves to get on the ‘Team USA’ bandwagon and still the national cricket team is short of a sponsor.
The chances of a person who is not a member of an immigrant community finding the game of cricket, deciding to spend the time to learn the game or investing in the USA cricket team are negligible. Even if they wanted to there are so many obstacles in their way anyone bar the most motivated will just give up. While cricket exists as it does it will remain the reserve of the immigrant community and their children.
Cricket in America is a story of missed opportunity, self-interest and inaction. There is talk of the ‘American market’ that gets greedy administrators excited. There are millions of fans waiting to spend their money, but they are never going to be the way the sport will grow. The only way that will happen is if participation numbers are increased and those new players raise standards domestically and in the national team. There are people that want this to happen. Unfortunately they are all too often pushed aside by those that are motivated by self-interest.
This is far from unique to the USA. Acting for themselves rather than the good of the sport is common with cricket administrators worldwide. The difficulty they have in America is that it is a minority sport without a cricket-loving public with money to spend that will save those running the game’s blushes. The USACA is a shambles, and the Facebook meltdown of Kenwyn Williams is just the most public example of this. If not for the ICC bailing it out the USACA would have folded years ago, and its passing would not be mourned by those that care about cricket.
It is close to being suspended from the ICC for the third time in seven years. There is enough opposition against it for people to be motivated to create a viable alternative in the ACF. That in itself shows how far the USACA has sunk in the estimation of those that play the game.
Cricket can grow, but as ever expansion is tempered by those who are myopic enough to think that long-term growth can be sacrificed for short-term gain. The growth of non-American sports is not impossible in America. Football, or soccer as they insist on calling it, has shown a massive increase in participation at every level. The national team is succeeding on a global stage reaching World Cup quarter-finals in 2002 and 2014, youth participation continues to rise, and fans are falling in love with the game.
Cricket isn’t going to reach the level that football has, and it would be foolish to think that it could compete. That is not to say there isn’t space for another sport in America but it needs to grow organically. The parachuting in of international teams will not grow the sport, it will only generate interest with those who are already a fan.
There were Twenty20 matches in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, between New Zealand and Sri Lanka in 2010. New Zealand took on the West Indies in 2012. These were well attended, but when the matches were over the fans that came to watch went back to their lives without a thought about expanding interest in American cricket.
There has only been one time that the USA have competed on the global stage. At the 2004 Champions Trophy they were surprise competitors having won the qualifying tournament by a net run rate margin of 0.028.
Getting there was an achievement but once they were there it was clear that they had a long way to go. In their second match they were bowled out for 65 by Australia. Following the defeat the Australian ca
ptain Ricky Ponting said he ‘wasn’t sure this was the place for teams like this’.
This poor showing was despite the USA team having drafted in former West Indian cricketer Clayton Lambert in their middle order. Lambert was 42 by the time he turned out for the USA, and he looked his age. Homegrown players are the key but they are 20 years in the making. Handing kids cricket equipment is the first step in a massive journey. Without the organisation and infrastructure in place to nurture talent that will never happen.
An ICC source told me that there are two elements to cricket in the USA, the commercial one and the cricket-playing one. Where the ICC has focused on growing the game, those in charge in the US have had different priorities. ‘We’ve probably tried to focus more on the cricket-playing or at least the structural stuff, where a lot of focus does tend to go on to the commercial side of things.’
That a team finds it hard to step up to the highest level is not a surprise. The only way they get better is by playing at the highest possible level. The disappointing thing is that in the decade since this breakthrough to a major event the USA have failed to emulate this achievement. The sport has become even more marginalised thanks to the short-sighted and incompetent administration of those that run it.
The issue any associate nation will have is that those who run the sport, the boards of England, India and Australia, are not interested in growth. Cricket has a delineated footprint and those in charge are happy to keep it that size. With this in mind the only solution is to concentrate on cricket within their own borders. Get kids playing the game, and find people that love the sport to run it. If that doesn’t happen it won’t be long before there is no sport left to run.