Anderson mugged on way to the bank
Kanishkaa Balachandran
25-Feb-2013
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There were always going to be casualties thrown up by the world's first $20m cricket match and yesterday James Anderson became the most prominent, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.
It is part of sporting life but Anderson must have felt like he had been mugged on the way to the bank. He must have thought all along that he would be one of those to have a shot at winning $1m, the prize on offer to each member of the winning team. Two main factors conspired against him: the nature of the pitch at Stanford Cricket Ground which persuaded England that they must play a second spinner, Graeme Swann, and the return to the one-day international fold of Stephen Harmison whose bang it in methods were bound to be preferred on this surface.
In the Times, Giles Smith gives a satirical explanation of how the Stanford circus works.
Teams representing England and an American billionaire compete on the buzzer to answer questions worth an escalating amount of money in a number of categories, including History, Theology, Industrial Archaeology and Stars of the Soaps. Meanwhile, the players' wives are locked in a soundproof booth at the back of the set with Allen Stanford. The player who least objects to his wife jiggling around on the American billionaire's lap has five minutes to plait dough and/or fold a paper napkin into the shape of a carthorse, as previously demonstrated by a special guest expert. He then climbs into the all-important, see-through “Cube of Cash”, where he must grab as much money as he can in three hours with assistance from Sir Ian Botham and the lovely Debbie McGee.
In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain catches up with the man himself, Allen Stanford, for a chat. Stanford talks about his motivation behind the project, reaction to the negative press in the UK and assures that his relationship with the ECB is smooth.
The way we play cricket here is different and the reason a lot of people say West Indies is their second favourite team is because they're great athletes and have great fans - and we were losing all of that. So if I'm in your face, I apologise. I don't mean to be in anybody's face.
On the eve of the $20 million clash, Mike Selvey in the Guardian analyses England's final XI and feels it will be foolhardy to expect them to sail through the contest, against a very competent Superstars squad picked by Stanford's Legends.
In the same paper, Barney Ronay does a pitch report and describes the surface as a "stretch of cursed earth" that should look itself in the mirror.
Their [England's] indignation at the appalling conditions, the boorish behaviour of their patron, Sir Allen Stanford, their sheer anger at what amounts to nothing less than a sustained loss of dignity, is simply insupportable in the absence of the only reaction which would carry any serious meaning. That, of course, would be to walk away, to say that the whole grisly charade is simply not worth the money, writes James Lawton in the Independent.
While the Lottery Board doesn't publish the list if losers, the defeated players in the Stanford match "will be ridiculed by a public anxious to see a bunch of 'pampered stars' fall a notch or two", says Lasana Liburd in the Trinidad Express.
Kanishkaa Balachandran is a senior sub-editor at ESPNcricinfo