Since the close of the initial membership registration process, USA Cricket has been working to ensure that all those who experienced difficulties with the registration process have been able to complete their registration, and to solve some of the outstanding technology problems to create a better experience moving forward.
In taking the time to improve the effectiveness, reliability and performance of the membership portal, there has been significant delay in concluding the initial membership registration. However, in an update today, USA Cricket confirms that this work is very nearly complete and announces the following next steps:
- During the coming week, all those who have already registered and received a unique USA Cricket ID will be given a further few days to carry out a final review of their profile and check that it accurately and completely captures their personal information.
- As soon as possible after that, all League/Academy administrators will be provided with access to the portal in order to review and confirm all those members who have sought to align with their League/Academy, and to pay the applicable membership fees for such members to USA Cricket.
- All those members who are not aligned to a listed League/Academy, and who have not already paid the individual membership fee, will be given a short period of time to pay the membership fee themselves directly to USA Cricket through the portal.
- Once the payment process is complete, a first draft list of eligible voters will then be provided to the Nominating & Governance Committee (NGC) for their scrutiny and posting for peer review.
- Following that process, the NGC will then determine the appropriate next steps in conducting the election, which will include the finalization of an eligible voter list. Those steps and timeline will need to be carefully constructed given the ongoing lawsuit which seeks to deprive the overwhelming majority of the newly registered members a right to vote, or stand as a candidate, in the delayed Board election.
- Once the list of eligible voters is finalized, and irrespective of the election process that is determined, the membership portal will then be reopened and all those who have so far been unable to register will be able to complete the process. Membership will also be opened to supporters at that point.
Iain Higgins, Chief Executive of USA Cricket, explained, “Unfortunately, for various reasons, the process of designing, testing and implementing a custom-build membership portal has taken much longer than we expected. A lot of work and effort has been put into developing a portal which is capable of navigating the complex US cricket community for the purposes of membership, but which also has the potential to grow into a world class fan engagement tool. However, the work has been slow and involved a number of challenges that we did not anticipate. This has had the unintended consequences of delaying the Board election, which has further been complicated by the ongoing lawsuit which seeks to prevent the election from going ahead as previously determined by the Board.”
“These challenges and the delay that they have caused are extremely frustrating, especially after we saw so many members join during the initial phase, and knowing that there is a huge amount of additional interest from right across the country just waiting for the membership portal to reopen. We were delighted to have increased the membership base from just 700 or so individual members, but disappointed that we have not yet been able to roll out all of the exciting benefits that the membership portal had promised.”
“However, we understand very well the importance of ensuring the accuracy and protecting the integrity of the data within the membership portal. This is an extremely important project, not just for the management of elections, but for the future growth of cricket in the USA and around which we believe the cricket community will eventually all gravitate. I understand the frustrations caused by the delay, but there have been some extenuating challenges and, hopefully, it won’t be much longer before we can move beyond those challenges and start to implement this new functionality.”
