Curtly backs ECB on Stanford deal
THE England cricket team’s involvement with multi-billion-pound fraudster Allen Stanford — an all-time low point — has been defended by West Indies cricket legend Sir Curtly Ambrose.
Great fast bowler Ambrose never spoke to the media during his playing career but launched his aptly titled autobiography Time to Talk on the eve of the West Indies-England series.
Ambrose was one of the West Indies stars, along with Sir Viv Richards and Richie Richardson, who accompanied Stanford when he flew by helicopter to the Lord’s nursery ground in 2008 to launch his five-year deal with England that ended with his arrest and subsequent 110year jail sentence, just one $20million T20 game into the contract.
Ambrose (right) wrote: ‘I wasn’t surprised the England Cricket Board officials were taken in by him. We all were. His vision to improve West Indies cricket by using England seemed a hard one to argue with. But we felt that having England as the same opponents over that period would turn things stale.’
Richardson said: ‘He employed a lot of people in several businesses and built a stadium. He did a lot of good. We thought what he was doing was legitimate.’ Richards added: ‘To a lot of fellers here, he did well.’
However, the new ECB president Giles Clarke, who negotiated the doomed deal and greeted Stanford on his arrival at Lord’s with a bear hug, did not want to discuss the Stanford legacy.
Before the Wisden launch last week at which he made a fool of himself by haranguing both the guest speaker and Wisden editor Lawrence Booth, Clarke would only say of Stanford: ‘That was all a long time ago.’
Perhaps it’s no surprise, with Stanford’s decaying cricket stadium just outside Antigua’s airport there for all visitors to see, that Clarke is swerving today’s first Test on the island. MICHAEL VAUGHAN might still be a long way from agreeing terms and working patterns to become England’s director of cricket. But he is staying at England’s luxury Sugar Ridge Hotel in Antigua, so he’s right in the middle of any politics going on over the appointment of a director and ideally placed to judge the mood music of players and management. ENGLAND rugby head coach Stuart Lancaster seems unperturbed by criticism that after four successive second places in the Six Nations, he’s been talking the talk, rather than walking the walk.
Lancaster has a speaking engagement a week today in aid of the Dallaglio Foundation along with Sir Clive Woodward, Lawrence Dallaglio and captain Chris Robshaw at a £225-a-head function. The RFU say all Lancaster’s talks in the run-up to the World Cup are for charity. THE Grand National peak viewing figure of 8.8million proved that this is one event on the racing calendar that Channel 4 invariably get right, even without Clare Balding. And the occasion was a personal triumph for regular racing presenter Nick Luck, who proved that C4 didn’t need a Jeremy Kyle or Jake Humphrey when Balding defected to commentate on the men’s and women’s Boat Races for the BBC.