“Everything is spoiled when money puts its ugly nose in.” Mary Russell
Mitford, essayist and cricket lover, knew a bit about the relationship
between sport and money, writing this during cricket’s first match-fixing
crisis in the early nineteenth century. Were she alive today, she would be
looking at events in Coolidge, Antigua, with a knowing eye. She might even
say, I told you so.
The week-long festival in Antigua, which will have its climax tomorrow, has,
in a way, taken cricket right back to its origins. What began as a rustic
game played and enjoyed by few, spread its wings in the main through
gambling, and its popularisation was largely driven by the enthusiasm of
aristocratic patrons who liked a punt and who recognised, in cricket, a fun
vehicle for doing so.
This week, cricket has again been reduced to its essence: money. The patron
this time, though, is a Texan billionaire financier called Allen Stanford
and his pawns are the teams of England, Trinidad and Tobago, Middlesex, and
Stanford’s own invitational XI, the Stanford Superstars.
Not much money has changed hands yet. Middlesex and Trinidad played a match
for a total purse of $400,000 (£242,000) on Tuesday – won by the locals –
but other than that the games have been warm-up matches for the big one
tomorrow between England and the Stanford Superstars, the purse for which is
a staggering $20 million (£12 million) – the richest one-off prize in team
sport.
It will be a virtual winner takes all event, with $1 million going to each of
the winning players, $1 million to be split between the four unlucky souls
who don’t make the final XI, $1 million between the management team and the
remaining $7 million to be split between the respective cricket boards of
England and the West Indies. Nothing to the losers.
In itself, a money-match is not a problem. Once Kerry Packer had, in the late
1970s, persuaded the greatest players of the day to side with his breakaway
league rather than the traditional system, world cricket has been a
professional game. “We’re all whores,” sneered Packer at the administrators
of the time. “What’s your price?” The price he found, and as Mr Stanford
found when he started to negotiate with English cricket this year, is a
relatively cheap one.
Those approaching this week with honesty – an honesty that has been decidedly
thin on the ground – realised that the only meaningful thing of the whole
week was the destination of the cheque. Oh, no doubt there will be a
ghoulish fascination to see whether anyone will cock up under pressure and
cost his mates a life-changing sum, but the kind of things we normally watch
international sport for – excellence and patriotism, for example – will be
entirely absent.
The cricket itself is meaningless, the result meaningless except for the fact
that it will make dollar millionaires of a lucky few. The England and Wales
Cricket Board (ECB) has tried to justify the trip as a kind of charitable
exercise for West Indian cricket, and Peter Moores, the England coach, has
talked of the pride of playing for the England badge. But, as Alastair Cook,
the young England batsman, rightly said, the match is irrelevant without the
cheque at the end of it. Well, fair enough. Who would turn down the chance
of three hours’ work for a million bucks? But what the ECB had hoped would
be a fairly harmless exercise in keeping its star players sweet (they have
been excluded so far from profiting from the start-up Indian Premier League)
has turned into a public relations disaster.
Things began to go wrong initially because it soon became apparent that the
standard of the pitch made for dull cricket. In fairness, Antigua was rocked
by the tail end of a hurricane two weeks ago, and in virtually every other
respect Mr Stanford has built a world-class facility. But Twenty20 – which
is to cricket what draughts is to chess – is nothing without a steady supply
of sixes and fours. Instead, the conditions this week have reduced
international batsmen to groping around with what have looked not so much
like cricket bats as white sticks.
Then there are the floodlights. Because of the closeness of the airport (the
ground is just a few hundred yards from it) there are restrictions on the
height of the lights and the angle at which they can be pointed. This has
meant slightly darker conditions than players are used to during day/night
matches (although, in truth, the conditions are perfectly acceptable), which
has resulted in a rash of dropped catches. International cricketers have
fielded, at times, like pub players on a Sunday afternoon after a
particularly long and liquid lunch.
But most of all, it is has been the perception that the England team is being
used primarily to promote Mr Stanford himself and his brand that has caused
the greatest discomfort. Images of Mr Stanford, first smiling beatifically
down from his balcony like some latterday Jay Gatsby, then doing a royal
tour around the ground with a personal cameraman in attendance and finally,
and most embarrassingly for the England players, bouncing a couple of the
so-called WAGs up and down on his knee, have led to accusations that the
England team has been pawned off for little more than a rich man’s ego trip.
Attention has been focused on the most important man of all – and don’t kid
yourself that it’s any one of the players on view.
This, ultimately, is not so much a problem about money as about misperception.
Did the ECB really think that a billionaire businessman would hand over $100
million (this is a five-year deal) without wanting his pound of flesh? If
they did, they had only to spend five minutes checking out the tournament
that Mr Stanford holds every year at his ground in April. The back-slapping,
the high-fiving, the personal cameraman, the access to the dressing rooms
are all in keeping with what has gone before. Mr Stanford has behaved
entirely in character and must be bemused, therefore, by the reaction.
On this score it is impossible to have sympathy for those who run English
cricket. In June, when Mr Stanford arrived at Lord’s in a gold-plated,
personalised helicopter, he did so trailing a Perspex box stuffed with $20
million in cash and legends of the game in tow. It was hardly a low-key
entrance. What did they expect of him this week? You can just imagine them
now: “Ooooh, the devil has horns!” Really?
English cricket got so dazzled by the glare off the Perspex box that,
disorientated, it was unable to stop and think about what it was getting
itself involved in. Mary Russell Mitford was right in one sense; and when
you add cricket and an American – two things that have always viewed each
other suspiciously – to the mix, chaos is the inevitable result.
The Stanford Circus
October 2005 Allen Stanford says that he will invest $28 million (£16
million) in West Indies cricket by funding a Caribbean Twenty20 competition.
First event held the next year.
June 2008 Stanford launches five-year deal to arrange an annual
winner-takes-all match for $20 million between England and his Stanford
Superstars.
October 24 England assemble in Antigua for a week of warm-up matches.
October 25 Stanford Superstars win opening match against Trinidad, but
there are complaints about the quality of the pitch and the floodlights.
October 26 England scrape a win over Middlesex, while TV cameras pick
up Stanford cavorting with three partners of the England players, including
bouncing the pregnant wife of the England wicketkeeper on his lap.
October 28 After a media outcry over his behaviour, Stanford makes a
public apology. England, down to 11 fit men, beat Trinidad in final warm-up
game.
October 29 Two more England players have picked up injuries. Two
Middlesex players, one only 19, are drafted in on standby. Cocktail party
with players cancelled.
October 30 Stories spread about the players’ disgruntlement. Kevin
Pietersen says: “The longer this week goes on, the more you just want to get
it over with. You always want to win a fixture for England but what will be,
will be. I’m not too fussed.”
Words by Patrick Kidd.
