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Thanks to Sir Allen Stanford, England will play a West Indies XI for a £10 million prize every year for the next five years. Each player on the winning team will get £500,000. Wish we had the job of picking the England side.
“You’ll get half a million quid. You’ll get half a million quid. You? You won’t get half a million quid. Why? Well it was a close-run thing, but I think Player A’s in slightly better form. Okay? Any problems?”
Player A will get a duck.
Of course it won’t really be a problem for the team, because they’re all mature adults. You know how mature everyone is when it comes to money. No-one ever gets bent out of shape over money. Particularly not HUGE amounts of money.
No problem at all.
They can always follow the mature and considered approach of football players and teams. KP=Cristiano Ronaldo
It is all going to go so wrong.
Makes me yearn for the good honest days of amateurs and professionals – where amateurs used to make three times the pros by fiddling expenses and being educated at proper schools (or just being educated).
At least then everyone knew there was huge inequality and dissent in the dressing room about pay. Now it’s going to be covered up with hideous cliches about playing for the team and not the cash.
Talking of cliches – it’s all going to end in tears (Collingwood’s).
It is just me but impact on England’s team aside (sorry), isn’t this a daft way to accomplish Stanford stated goal of reviving West Indies cricket? Sure, people will watch, but it will only be one match a year, and the long term effect will be negligible, esp. if (as on current form) W. Indies lose.
Why not spend the same amount of money on developing schools and club cricket? Or put the money into the WI domestic Stanford 20/20 series, an entire tournament that he’s giving less money than a single one of these super-Sharjah matches?
It comes across as more of Stanford trying to one-up the IPL than improving WI cricket.
That aside, you’re right the selection politics will be incredible – and probably will get as much publicity as the match itself. You can’t even replace a player who got a duck for the next match because it;’s only one a year.
At least I’m glad they apparently got rid of winner-takes-all (although it’s not clear how much the loser gets) . Can you imagine an umpire (take your pick) missing a catch or giving a bogus LBW to decide the match and cost each losing player £500,000? They’ll have to have hire umpire bodyguards – on the pitch.
This will not end well.
I bet Vaughany’s spewing, as he won’t get a penny of it!
I notice KP went and got some important practice in last night, with bat and ball..
Colly bowled well too, but is still batting with the wrong end. The doofus.
KP seemed very calm about it all this morning, maybe as he’s just about the only 100% safe pick in the squad…
I can at least see a slight positive to all this recent mess, in that if this champions league crap gets going, then that would supercede the IPL, and give reasons for players to not want to go there. if it widens out to one or two teams per country, then players might be more strategic and look to play for the best side in a weaker country instead in order to get to the champions doodad. or maybe that’s actually “as well as” not “instead”
Does anyone know what the difference is between the STANFORD SUPERSTARS, or whatever, and the West Indies?
And also, I wouldn’t worry about the money changing England’s players – they’re pretty awful at Twenty20 anyway, so it’ll all be Chanderpaul’s money….
Perhaps the ECB could generate even more money for their coffers by organising a reality tv show to choose who gets picked for the team?
AP, the difference is Allen Stanford and his team of cronies select the side, not the WICB.
It’s just mental. Will there ever have been a sporting contest on the planet that will be as ferociously fought for by the players and as indifferently glanced at by the population?
A serious suggestion for Moores’ selection dilemmas: I think it would be fair to have a trial match beforehand involving the top 22 candidates for the squad. The team would not have to be picked according to the best performers in that match, but it will give a chance to stake a claim for those just on the outside fringes of selection vis-a-vis those just on the inside.
And one could have super-cheap/free or going-to-charity tickets for the trial match. It would generate plenty of publicity in itself.
We’d go. It’d be that particular festival atmosphere you get when money’s not involved.
You know – the kind of atmosphere they spend millions on trying to recreate.
I love it…£10 Million used as prize money, and not a penny going to third world countries.