The chorus of “I told you so” were audible even as far away as New Zealand.
A host of sceptics were adamant from the start that Sir Allen Stanford’s fanfared entry into West Indies cricket was too good – or too bad – to be true.
His global financial empire might have turned over skillions annually but there appeared no business sense to his sudden heavy investment in a regional game restricted to small territories with small economies and small populations.
Even in the long run, it surely could not earn a profit. Perhaps it was a message from accountants bold enough to deliver it that is one reason for his decision to “review” his involvement.
It was similar advice that forced Kerry Packer to cut costs in his second season of World Series Cricket.
There are clearly other grounds for Stanford’s reasseement.
He himself has cited as another the sponsorship clash with Digicel over his Super Stars’ 20/20 for 20 million match against England that became the jewel in his crown.
It led to an expensive, widely publicised case in a London court, an embarrassment for which he squarely blames the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB).
It was an event he clearly expected to boost his global image and that of his companies. Instead, the British media ensured it was a public relations disaster with its disparagement of every aspect of it.
There were many who could not accept his stated motives at face value.
“My love for cricket is as great as any West Indians’ and it is certainly something that, when it is at the top, we all rise to the top with it, businesses included and I have businesses in the Caribbean and we all float up with it,” Stanford said prior to this year’s regional 20/20 tournament.
“Plus it’s a very emotional thing and when cricket falls into the trough as it has been, you want to try and do something about it.
“In essence, this was the impetus for my venture into the business of cricket in 2005, and it continues to be the driving force behind my heavy investment in the game in the Caribbean,” he added.
Michael Holding was one of those who first sparked Stanford’s interest in cricket. He spent a brief time as one of the ‘legends’ on his board of directors before resigning. Ironically, he became one of his sharpest critics.
The revered fast bowler of the great team under Clive Lloyd (who also severed links with Stanford early in the piece) acknowledged that the initial plan benefited West Indies cricket through grants to individual associations to develop the game and its infrastructure.
But he claimed that changed with Stanford’s deal with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for the US$20 million Super Series in Antigua and subsequent projects in England.
“He wants to promote himself and his companies, that’s all,” Holding told the London Daily Mail last August. “If people can’t see that then I can’t help them, it’s their problem.”
Whatever the arguments and the causes for Stanford’s change of direction, there can be no doubt that he injected a new excitement to Caribbean cricket to counteract the constant bungling and incompetence of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the depressing results on the field.
Even Chetram Singh, long-serving Guyana board chief and WICB director, acknowledged that Stanford cricket “pulled a lot of people in to the game and a lot of territories benefited from the money to buy equipment and renovate their grounds and hire coaches and so on.”
If he now pulls the plug on his Caribbean cricket operations, as opposed to his English, venture – as seems likely with the disbanding of his board of legends and the closing of the office in Antigua – the 20/20 tournament will be missed most of all.
Quite apart from the huge prize money earned by the winning teams and players – Trinidad and Tobago pocketed US$1.5 million in the two years, Guyana US$1 million, Jamaica US$500,000 – it gave the anonymous weekend club cricketers from previously ignored smaller islands their moment in the television spotlight and their impoverished associations finances never forthcoming from the regional board.
Characters like Dane Weston from US Virgin Islands who became a star with his stares, hip-wiggling wicket celebrations and “war” talk, like Lionel Ritchie, the batsman from St. Maarten with the showbiz name, like construction worker Maxford Pipe from the BVI.
It brought Lionel Baker and Andre Fletcher to wider public attention, both moving into the West Indies team, Baker as Montserrat’s first Test player.
The accepted modern maxim is that sport is a business and, like any other business, is guided by the bottom line.
It led Stanford to sell his Caribbean Star and Caribbean Sun airlines and now appears as if his venture into West Indies cricket will endure the same fate.
