Stanford Superstars $13m, England $0m. That was the stark scoreline from the Stanford Cricket Ground in the early hours of this morning and, to be honest, England were good value for the money. Frankly, they were overwhelmed by the occasion, or rather the sheer size of the purse on offer. To anybody who had watched them from close quarters agonise over this game for the previous few days this must have come as no great surprise. They have not been comfortable with the concept from the outset.

They were never in the contest from the moment they lost their first wicket in the fourth over. From 21 for no wicket, they collapsed in undignified fashion to 99 all out, which is the sort of score that cannot be defended. It was their lowest in the history of Twenty20 cricket.

Chris Gayle and Andre Fletcher, a star risen and a star ascending, rampaged their way towards victory in such a flurry of fours and sixes that soon every boundary simply became part of the celebratory party for a full house of 10,000 revelling in the fact that this was a national holiday.

Sir Allen Stanford’s decision to link this match to Independence Day could prove to be a masterstroke.

England had spent the week wondering whether they would hold the steepling catch if it came their way, but in the event none did as the Superstars rampaged home by 10 wickets. Gayle, unbeaten on 65 from 45 balls, finished the match by depositing Andrew Flintoff over the ropes for his fifth six.

England threw their wickets away with the abandon of millionaires dispensing dollar bills among the poor. The openers, Ian Bell and Matt Prior, fell to two good balls from Jerome Taylor, one a yorker, the other a clever leg-stump slower ball, but after that the majority fell to reckless cross-batted shots. That is not the way to play on a pitch that had shown signs of uneven bounce in earlier games. Their minds were well and truly boggled.

Tellingly, even England’s two biggest stars, and the two who had least reason to sweat on the money, were out to atrocious shots. Kevin Pietersen skipped across his stumps and attempted to sweep a ball off leg stump, an irresponsibly extravagant move. Flintoff fell to an ugly heave to leg. Neither reached double figures. Only three of their teammates did, Samit Patel top-scoring with 22.

The match may have been freakishly unusual but England’s performance was entirely consistent with the way they have often turned up for big one-day events overseas — undercooked, bearing a sort of post-colonial arrogance about whether they should actually dignify the occasion with their presence — and their reward was as royal a shafting as they got at the last two World Cups and the world Twenty20 championship. England, coming off their closed season, gave themselves a week. Stanford’s XI had been preparing for two months.

Bitterly disappointed though they will be, England will not begrudge the Superstars their success because they thoroughly deserved their huge windfalls, which will change the lives of several of them. Most are not established international players and even those that are do not command the sort of well-upholstered pay packages of the England players.

The money went to the needier players and if this result inspires a new generation of West Indians then the best outcome was indeed achieved. The likes of Suliemen Benn, a tall Bajan who took three wickets with his loping left-arm spin, and Darren Sammy, who learnt the game on St Lucia using a palm frond for a bat, plainly relished the chance they had been given. Sammy, named man of the match, took two wickets and a good catch in the deep, as did Dave Mohammed and Ramnaresh Sarwan. Gayle executed a sharp run out.

After the toss, the Antiguan national anthem was sung, but not the English one. The England players waited for a moment, as though it might be, before realising it wouldn’t be. That was to sum up the relative importance of the two teams to the occasion.

The England team must have felt as though they were taking on the whole island. Whatever the wider merits of the game, the occasion itself provided a terrific spectacle.