Match Made in Heaven?

Read my lips - no more taxes ... and no more jobs *

Included among the usual spring bumph from the Marylebone Cricket Club – advertisements for hotels and wine merchants in London, the club's rules and regulations for 2009, etc. – one particular leaflet caught my eye. This was the application form to buy tickets for "The Stanford Series for the Stanford Trophy".

As you may have guessed, this three-day tournament, to be played on 28-30 May 2009, is sponsored by a Mr Stanford. Indeed, not just a Mr Stanford, but the Mr Stanford, Allen Stanford of Stanford (there's that name again) International Bank fame, who was nabbed by the FBI last week and now stands charged by the American Securities and Exchange Commission with engaging in a "massive ongoing fraud" of "shocking magnitude". US$9.3 billion is one figure going the rounds.

The good folk of Antigua are understandably a bit worried, given that around about 5 percent of the working population is (was?) employed by Stanford. I suppose that's the flip side of operating as a tax haven in the Caribbean; you do tend to attract people looking for nice beaches and good laundry facilities.

Sounding like Corporal Jones from Dad's Army, Antigua's prime minister, Baldwin Spencer (a good name for a PM of a former British colony), sent a somewhat mixed message in a recent message to his nation:

"The fall-out threatens catastrophic and immediate consequences ... There is no need for panic."

But back to the MCC and the ground they operate, Lord's, "the home of cricket". In June last year Sir Allen (to give him his correct - no, I think "full" is a better word) landed on the sacred turf in London NW8 in a black helicopter bearing a plastic crateful of dollars to promote his Stanford Super Series. (Even his crates are tacky.)

On 26 October 2008, shortly before the first – and last – Stanford Super Series was played out in Antigua, Stephen Brenkley of The Independent wrote as follows:

"Of all the short-form matches currently being organised, the conclusion is easily reached that Stanford Superstars v England is the most offensive. It has no context as a proper sporting competition, it is neither country versus country, club versus club or invitation XI versus invitation XI. It is a rococo hybrid. It has money but nothing else going for it."

Now, of course, it just has the nothing else.

* Dark Knights: Sir Allen Stanford (l) and Michael Knighton (r)