Harsha Bhogle: Welcome to Time Out. We are looking at cricket in the United States today, and we're delighted to have Don Lockerbie, who is the CEO of USACA, talking to us about the trials and tribulations, and all the joys and frustrations, of taking cricket over there. I am also going to talk to Jamie Alter on the show, who is probably known to a lot of people as a byline on Cricinfo. Then we will get Haroon Lorgat, CEO of the ICC, on why the United States is such a hot destination for cricket, and finally the numbers game with S Rajesh.
HB: Don, first international cricket in the US - Sri Lanka playing New Zealand in a couple of Twenty20 internationals. Is that the start of something big?
Don Lockerbie: Absolutely. We have been working on our Destination USA programme since I took on the role of CEO of US cricket in April 2009. We have been very diligent about the entire concept of bringing in the best players and best teams in the world to the United States so that we can showcase cricket at the highest level and start to ignite what we think will be a big movement of cricket here.
HB: We have seen the US national team play in tournaments before, but do you look at the US as a playing destination or as a staging destination: that the teams will come there and play, not as much as homegrown players trying to make big on the world stage?
DL: No, it's both. We have three major initiatives that we have been working on. Destination USA is the first one, the one that will help us tell a compelling story about US cricket to the rest of the world. With 15 million hungry cricket fans residing in the United States and about another five million in Canada, and about two-three million in the West Indies, we are surrounded by nearly 20 million cricket fans, and we believe that that market wants to see the best players in the world play. That is our Destination USA programme.
We also have a programme called Project 15. It's an attempt to get the United States into the 2015 World Cup, and to do that we certainly have to be in the top 15 or better in the world.
And that means we have to win matches, we've got to improve, we've got to develop players, we've got to have training programmes, we've got to have national programmes. That is our second initiative.
The third initiative is "American Cricket", and that's an attempt to get our cricket into schools. To develop our youth programme, to introduce the sport to very good athletes who might not have been growing up with cricket in their home. For sports like baseball and softball for women, in the United States people get scholarships and try to become pro, and there are plenty who are not going to make it to professional and collegiate level. We believe that there are tens and thousands of very qualified athletes who can learn the game and would love to be professional cricketers one day.
HB: Twenty million is a lot of people, and I guess a lot of them eat curry and have accents like mine.
DL: Well, they do, but there is no question that it's only seven or eight percent of the population. We have got a lot more people we can introduce the game to. We are certainly thrilled with the fact that over the last few decades Commonwealth countries residents have moved to the United States, they have brought their culture, they have brought their heritage, and one of those pieces of the pie would be their love for cricket. And they have certainly kept it growing with their American-born children. At the same time we are finding that the growth of the game is creating a new wave of interest. We have over 1000 cricket clubs in the United States, we have 30,000 active members of USA cricket, and we estimate that there are 200,000 players recreationally on a given weekend in the United States. So it's growing, and right now we are more of an underground sport. We are working to get us at the grassroots and then someday in the mainstream.
HB: We mustn't let our friends in Australia and New Zealand hear those numbers, because when you say 20 million people following cricket, that's more than the two of them together can rustle up.
DL: Well, the US is a large country, and that also makes it difficult for us. For a lot of the things that the ICC expects us to do for the sport, it means that we need much more in the way of resources. There are some countries who can visit all their cricket fields before noon in a day. Perhaps, like India, it takes us several weeks or months [laughs].
HB: I know. Jamie studied in the US, and knows the pressures of trying to play cricket in the US. There are three things that Don talked about; the third of those was getting in the schools. Jamie, you see that as the biggest challenge?
Jamie Alter: I think that's the major challenge, the game there is still sort of seen as an elitist sport by the Americans. I am speaking from my own personal experience, when I was there in college and working there as well. It's played largely by the expats, so the biggest challenge is: how do you get it into the American schools and into that American demographic.
HB: Is it a bit like Netherland (the book by Joseph O'Neill), where you have to scramble around for whatever space you get and play? Was it like that when you were playing at college?
JA: I read the book a few years ago, and it was exactly how it was for us. You basically have to wait till someone is done with their Ultimate Frisbee game or their lacrosse game, or in somebody else's baseball lot. So again, space obviously is a problem, because it's a game which is foreign to the Americans. So it will be a big challenge to find grounds that are open for everyone to play in.
HB: Don, do you see the arrival of playing leagues in the USA, a bit like what football did in the 70s? You have the Peles and Cruyffs coming and playing in the US. Do you see people coming up and maybe playing cricket for the professional teams in the US?
DL: No question. In fact, we are well underway in a planning situation wherein we are working towards professionalisation of cricket in the United States to begin with. We are very diligent right now and working towards equalising what some of the other Associate nations like Ireland, Scotland, Holland and Canada have been able to do recently; beginning to put some of their players on professional retainers, and some of these players are now travelling and playing all over the world and getting IPL opportunities. We need to do that in the United States, and along with that will come a professional league.
I have spent a lot of years in American soccer. There is history there, and the strategies that were employed. When you actually think about it, our Destination USA programme and our Project 15 programme are not that original, when you look at what US soccer has done.
Yes, in the 1970s, the North American soccer league was Pele and Beckenbauer and other prominent players. It was a wonderful opportunity but it died. In 1994 the soccer World Cup took place, and it generated great interest in the sport and it was followed by Major League Soccer, which started in 1996. We are looking to do that too. We would love for the ICC to look at the United States in the future for some ICC events.
We are looking to bring in the best teams in the world. I will give you an another example - 14 years after Major League Soccer started in the United States, they are averaging 14,000, 17,000, 18,000 people to a match, which isn't too bad.
HB: I think we should get more with cricket. I mean, with all those Indians starved of cricket there…
DL: My point is that that's what they average on a night, on a daily night in their league. But when Barcelona comes to play Manchester United in Philadelphia they have 90,000. Why is that? When Mexico plays the United States, they can get 100,000 at the Rose Bowl. So the point is that soccer has a good history now of being positive, the US team is at the World Cup starting in less than two weeks.
So it's all moving in the right direction. So by bringing in Destination USA, events, and what we think was a successful Sri Lanka-New Zealand series, we start that way. And then also work towards a professional league and professionalising our players with national coaching programmes… these are the kind of things that will work.
One more thing that I would like to say is that the city of New York in their public school leagues, even going back to the book Netherland, now has 28 schools playing varsity high-school cricket with over a million-dollar-a-year budget. And that's our success story right now. Twenty-eight schools have made it a varsity sport, as opposed to 22 a year ago.
HB: It's good to hear. I thought US cricket lost out a great deal in the early days because they couldn't figure out whether it was to be called cricket association, cricket board or federation; and they did what lot of us do - they started fighting first.
But Jamie, when you were there did you have to explain to the Americans just what this game is? Why does the ball hit the ground? Why doesn't it curve in the air? Why don't they play with one mitt on?
JA: Honestly Harsha, I probably spent more time trying to give answers to the guys on the field, when I wasn't batting or when my team was batting, because they just couldn't get it.
I remember there were two guys who were playing varsity baseball, I knew them. So I got them to practise with us. They had their fielding down pat. They had all of us looking like fools in the fielding department. Obviously, they couldn't get the bowling down at all. The batting, as soon as you bowled them a full toss, the ball was in the next state. But obviously when you pitched the ball down on a length, they had problems there. I don't know how much that has changed since I was there five years ago.
HB: Good question to ask, Don. Do you still have to dig at puzzled looks when you see these guys in whites banging the ball down on the turf?
DL: I think the fact of the matter is that it is a curiosity to a lot of people, and yet now we have about 500 cricket grounds in the United States. Some on them may just be an artificial strip somewhere in a public park. But we have counted over 500, and that's an average of 10 per state. Certainly a lot of states like New York, California, Florida will have a lot more than the average. The fact is that people are seeing the game being played, and surely what we need to do is that we need to make sure that the cricketers are doing what Jamie was doing, and that's inviting their American friends to come play, try it out and see if they can learn the game. And not to worry about the heritage fiefdom that we have, or groups who basically close the door on anybody else and just play with friends and colleagues and families. I think that is the secret.
So my job is to really continue the exposure, and for me the exposure is going to be to get it into the schools, create youth academies, which are also happening, popping out all over the United States. We have a group out of the Atlanta area, which is already working with, reportedly, 10,000 kids in Atlanta schools and teaching it almost as a public physical-education curriculum. Then kids who are interested go the academies, if they find the sport interesting.
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