The Stanford series puts his spin on cricket

[moonjee06]

LONDON: One way of avoiding all the tricky consequences of your cricket team winning 11 million dollars is to play so badly that the result is never in doubt.

Judging by the disquiet emerging from the England camp in the build-up to the match, their 10-wicket thrashing by the Stanford Superstars in Saturday"s Twenty20 clash in Antigua, where the members of the winning XI got their hands on a million dollars each, almost came as something of a relief.

The winner-takes-all nature of the match sparked fears, not least among England"s players" association, about the potentially damaging effect on squad morale of dropping a catch which didn"t just lose the game but cost your team-mates a life changing sum of money.

And then there was the question of what it meant for the England cricket team to be playing in a match where the only point at stake was not victory over an old rival but the cash on offer.

The Stanford series was a way for the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to forestall the exit of leading players for lucrative engagements in the Indian Premier League Twenty20 competition, whose dates clash with the start of the English domestic and international season.As it is, England"s players didn"t become instant millionaires, a result likely to encourage the IPL in its pursuit of Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff.