ICC rep Eric Parthen defends USA Cricket registration process

ICC Americas USA project manager Eric Parthen has taken a positive outlook on the raw data of USA Cricket's membership drive ahead of the April 24 sign-up deadline to be able to vote in this year's inaugural elections. This, despite the overall numbers being well below the membership base of the ICC's former member board in America, the USA Cricket Association (USACA), at its peak.

"I certainly feel good about the work we did and the messages we got out there," Parthen told ESPNcricinfo. "When we realised there were challenges, we built in extra steps in the process. When that wasn't enough, we put a video out there, and then another video. I sleep well at night knowing we tried to meet the demands of the community and 8,500 people logged on to register. So clearly it wasn't an impossible process and I heard plenty of feedback that it was quite an easy process to get through."

When asked how he would characterise the number of voting-eligible sign-ups - 5500 individual members, 22 leagues and 151 clubs - Parthen said he was "excited" by the turnout even though USACA's most recently documented senior membership base in the 2014 ICC data census included more than 15,000 players.

Despite some calls for the deadline to be considered voting-eligible to be extended after some hiccups in the process, Parthen said USA Cricket will not be extending the registration deadline. Having already postponed the election once, they cannot afford further delays in order for a full board, including three independent directors, to be installed ahead of the ICC annual conference in Dublin on July 1. However, Parthen said, there is plenty of work to do to continue recruiting members to join through the rest of the year leading into 2019.

"Most national governing bodies work on signing people up 365 days a year - we had a compressed window to sign people up, we're doing it outside of the cricket season," Parthen said. "Most clubs and leagues were not in contact with their players at this point in time. We still haven't rolled out all the benefits that a national governing body should do and that we plan to do.

"We don't have a coach education programme that would attract coaches. We don't have an umpire education programme that would attract umpires. We don't have pathways yet that have local events that lead to regional or zonal events that lead to national events, and that's all part of the plan. We haven't rolled out all the benefits that we plan for membership either, because it would've been disingenuous to roll those out during a free process and then expect people to sign up again in a paid process. There's still more benefits that we're working on, that's a continuing work in progress to tailor to the needs of the community."

Of the few member programmes USA Cricket is currently operating, most are targeted at the high-performance programme and the men's national team in particular. This year's USA Cricket Combines culminate in final USA squad trials from June 21-24 in Houston, a city whose league is not voting eligible because only two of their 31 clubs signed up to be members. When asked if USA Cricket would consider allocating future events to areas that showed far greater commitment to joining the new governing body, such as the new turf wicket in the Chicago suburb of Bolingbrook, Parthen said that the first objective is to utilise the best possible facilities but said it was something that may be taken into consideration going forward.

"As much as we absolutely want to support those that are supporting us, right now we need to do what's in the best interest of our players," Parthen said. "If being in Houston is in the best interests of our players, that's where our focus is right now. But long term, absolutely we want to support those that are supporting us and that will be a consideration. Until we're functioning at 100%, I think it would be shortsighted to not put our players first and we'll continue to do that in every decision that we make."

A common complaint from players and administrators about the sign-up process was the rigidness of the registration website. Unless a club or league administrator had gone through the registration process prior to any of its members, those members could not register as an aligned member of that respective league or club. This was done so that clubs or leagues were not just dumping in a database of names, many of which could be duplicates appearing elsewhere or otherwise illegitimate players.

It forced players to align themselves with one primary club, something that Parthen says was purposely done by the ICC's Sustainable Foundation advisory group when they designed the new constitution in order to get a true representation of the playing community. Aside from maintaining the integrity of the election process so people aren't voting twice, Parthen said another very important reason is the impact numbers have on negotiations for commercial deals. Parthen wants to ensure that the data they are presenting to prospective partners gives those partners a clear picture of USA Cricket's reach and possible return on investment.

"A national governing body needs to know the size of their community," Parthen said. "When USA Hockey is out there trying to sell commercial deals across their membership, they need to be able to tell a commercial partner that they've got 650,000 people that are playing hockey within the USA Hockey family. If you're trying to sell a Chevy vehicle, you know that you're going to have 650,000 eyeballs that are going to see that data.

"Nobody knew what that number was in cricket so that was one of the things we decided early on - for us to truly know how to grow, commercialise and support the game, we need to know whether we're focused on 20,000 players or 120,000 players. If it's really 20,000 and we counted each player six times because they signed up for the T20 league, the 40-over league, something across town and something else [in other states], we wouldn't know how big the community is."

Perhaps the biggest membership obstacle that exists for USA Cricket is not from people frustrated by certain aspects of the registration process, but rather those who never bothered to visit the website because they were either disinterested or saw no benefit in being a member. One such league player in Houston, Amrish Ghodasara, described some of his reasons in a social media post, saying that his club and league were formed without any support or assistance offered by USACA or USA Cricket, so he saw no reason to support them in return. It's a common viewpoint, one Parthen said he understands.

"As much as I'd like to say I don't agree with him, I think I do. That's the point we've made over and over, that we don't have programmes, services and benefits right now. We offer insurance right now and that's a benefit to some and not to others. That's really the biggest benefit we offer right now and some people don't even fully understand that. Some people are probably operating with sub-par insurance and they don't understand how a sport should be insured.

"But frankly I agree with what he said and it's on us to change that perspective, and we'll only change it with programmes and services that USA Cricket runs. I'm confident we'll be able to change that perspective. Each benefit will add to the value proposition. Insurance alone may not be enough to push them [to register], voting alone may not be enough. They did all the heavy lifting and they did the heavy lifting because there wasn't an entity out there that could help them. We hope that when USA Cricket is a fully functioning entity, the burden of doing what they have started will be much easier."