Lucre who's talking
Sri Lanka's decision to accept Lalit Modi's $70m offer is comeuppance for the ECB's reluctance to grant the nation Test matches in England, writes Gideon Haigh in the Guardian .
George Binoy
25-Feb-2013
Sri Lanka's decision to accept Lalit Modi's $70m offer is comeuppance for the ECB's reluctance to grant the nation Test matches in England, writes Gideon Haigh in the Guardian.
So, too, is the England and Wales Cricket Board hemmed in that little bit tighter. For which country's cricketers will be content to accept second billing in an English summer when they can see their names up in the razzle-dazzling Indian Premier League lights? The ECB also gets its comeuppance for decades of neglect: Sri Lanka, in their quarter century as a Test nation, have been granted only 10 Tests in England ...
... The multi-million dollar endowment for Sri Lanka Cricket projects the BCCI into a new position: that of cricket's lender of last resort. And Sri Lanka, of course, is far from alone in having rising expenses to meet and restive cricketers to placate: more benefactions are perfectly possible.
George Binoy is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo