Call me old fashioned, but I am a bit of a cricketing snob. Don't get me wrong, I just love the new 20-20 cricket and would love to see the new IPL on TV - I think it is true 'Blue Ocean' thinking on a previously tired sport. But when a Texan billionaire offers $20m just to stage a couple of games in the Caribbean, some of them against County opposition, you had to wonder what was the point.
Because he could, would seem to be the answer. When I first read it, I had to look the guy up and since I used his name in my blog on Cricket and Blue Ocean Thinking - Sir Allen Stanford, for indeed he is a Sir, albeit conferred on him by an island other than Great Britain, seemed to be a kosher billionaire. I tried to look at where his cricketing credentials had come from - did he play once even in a pub team? You don't get much cricket in Texas as far as I'm aware. It turned out his connection was with the Caribbean. If you looked at his website when I had done, very little was revealed about the sources of his wealth other than to say his companies were passed down to him from his father and that he was extremely active in Caribbean life and charities there. He seemed like the sort of guy you would be very keen to tap up for a few million for a couple of games of cricket.
Furthering The Sport
It comes as a bit of embarrassment then that just days after his re-election as Chairman of the ECB, Giles Clarke, who was instrumental at negotiating and putting together these daft games as part of the 'Stanford Super Series', has seen Sir Allen arrested by US Authorities in an alleged $8bn financial fraud.
When the actual games were played last year, we had the daft sight of England playing the Stanford Superstars Team (who were a select bunch of West Indian cricketers) for a one-off, winner-takes-all $20 million bonanza. It proved very little and the only thing about the England Team that turned up were their wives and girlfriends - it was a farce. Undeterred, Clarke had felt that this was some sort of template for a future series and succumbed to negotiating for more of these pointless matches, when the real action was taking place in India and the real goal should have been how to accommodate the single most exciting thing to happen to cricket for years into the packed cricket calendar instead of packing it even more with meaningless games.
Not wishing to pre-empt things but perhaps the best thing that could have happened was that the founder of the dull series was arrested for alleged fraud so that the matter could be ended once and for all. While Giles Clarke may not be linked to the fraud, of course, it would seem an appropriate time to question his judgement on England's future, already dim enough ahead of the 2009 Ashes, and ask him to resign. Let's not even start mentioning his handling of the Kevin Pietersen captaincy fiasco.
End of An Era
Again, as a bit of a cricketing snob, and a greater lover of things like Test Match Special, on TV you simply could not beat the acid tones of Richie Benaud's insightful commentary. It is the end of an age of brilliant commentary as, at the ripe old age of 78, he has finally decided to hang up his microphone and depart the field.
I have always been a poor imitator of Benaud, with his crooked mouth and one-eyed delivery but that has never stopped me trying and boring everyone senseless with my 'What a great delivery', 'That's the shot of the day', 'He's gone', 'Thank you Jim, good morning everyone', and 'The only cold thing I had after a day's cricket was a beer.' At one time, just about all of my friends were at it giving imitations of varying degrees of worthiness of the great man. We even managed to get hold of the hilarious sets of Aussie tapes which spoof the whole Channel 9 commentary team who have difficulty pronouncing the Sri Lankan cricket teams' names. These tapes would be repeated every Summer whenever there was a bit of cricket on and like Monty Python they had an evergreen comic value.
So imagine should you ever be stuck on a plane from the South of France and you sit next to the Great Man himself, Richie Benaud. This did not happen to me, but it did to my old rugby playing friend whose only knowledge of cricket was that Benaud was a commentator. So when my friend related the story it went along the lines of this.
'I bet you didn't know how to spell Richie Benaud's name,' he said as openers. Showing my friend my copy of 'Richie Benaud, my spin on cricket' I explained I was one of his best fans so I did and knew the French connection through his autobiography. 'Well,' he continued, 'I'll bet you didn't know he played cricket.' I was aghast. Apparently Benaud had said to him that he originally came to England in 1954 - my friend remarked that was young for a commentator and Benaud explained that he had been an Australian Test Cricketer and indeed had captained the side later.
'Really?' said my friend. 'You know I have a mate back home who does a great imitation of you - here listen to this. I keep my teeth inside a jar, I broke me 'and, dad,' and various other lines from the stupid tapes including the vernacular. Benaud, get increasingly nervous and horrified, had no idea what he was talking about and clearly thought my friend had confused him with someone else or was indeed just bonkers. Finally, having met again at the luggage carousel, my friend had invited Richie to the Garibaldi pub in St Albans and he happily agreed to come along and meet all these friends who could impersonate him so well. To my knowledge Benaud has not yet made good on that promise. I wonder why.
Richie Benaud gave up commentating in the UK when cricket moved away from free to view TV - it was the mark of the man that he believed it should be viewed by as many people as possible. He is one of the greatest of all, the finest leg spinner in the game before Shane Warne and one of the greatest Australian Captains of all - he was a Professor of the game and his insight, acerbic comments and Aussie lilt will be much missed by the purists.
I wonder what Benaud would have said if Giles Clarke had asked his opinion of the farcical Stanford Series before he ventured down that path?
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