$20m Twenty20 match between England and Stanford Superstars at risk

A personal deal between two billionaire business rivals will have to be brokered to salvage the $20 million (about £11.4 million) winner-takes-all Twenty20 match between England and the Stanford Superstars after a High Court ruling put its future in serious doubt yesterday.

Allen Stanford will have to reach some form of compromise with Denis O’Brien, the owner of Digicel, the telecommunications company and main sponsor of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB), if the match has any chance of going ahead in Antigua on November 1. Among those hoping that a deal will be reached are the England players who stand to pocket about £500,000 a man if they win.

The London International Court of Arbitration ruled that by officially sanctioning the match without granting commercial rights to which Digicel was entitled, the WICB was in breach of contract. The match now has unofficial status — the same as the rebel Indian Cricket League (ICL).

However, Stanford’s organisation insisted last night that the game would go ahead. According to sources close to Digicel, Stanford and O’Brien spoke for the first time yesterday about the dispute and a compromise appears likely, despite the bad blood between the organisations.

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The court ruled that, having made all its contracted players available for a match that had been officially sanctioned, the Stanford Superstars are a West Indies representative team in all but name and therefore, as principal sponsor of Caribbean cricket, Digicel was being denied its commercial rights. Costs running into hundreds of thousands of pounds were awarded against the WICB, money it can ill- afford to lose. It cannot appeal.

The judgment raises the possibility that Stanford will decide to forgo the hassle of further negotiations, withdraw his support and that the match will be cancelled, although that prospect has been described as improbable by Stanford’s organisation. He could argue that the incompetence of the WICB would leave him within his rights to do so, but surely there is too much at stake — money and pride — for such an outcome.

More likely is that hastily arranged negotiations between all four parties — Stanford, the WICB, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Digicel — will find a way round the impasse. The ECB’s executive board met yesterday to discuss the matter, although it insists that, as an outsider to the arbitration process, its position remains unaltered. And while Stanford’s organisation was not in a position to respond publicly to a judgment it had not seen in full, negotiations with Digicel were continuing.

If the game is to go ahead, one of three things must happen: first, the Stanford Superstars must be seen not to be a West Indies team. This would mean Stanford pitting a substantially weakened side against England. He could, alternatively, rebrand his team as an international Superstars XI.

Secondly, the match could go ahead as a private arrangement between Stanford and the ECB. This, though, would give the tournament the same status as the rebel ICL, against which Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman, has been stridently opposed. Even in these days of money over principle, Clarke could not agree to that — nor would the players, given the potential pariah status that may result.

Thirdly, and by far the most likely option, Stanford and Digicel will come to a commercial arrangement whereby Digicel allows the game to go ahead in return for the kind of commercial and branding rights to which it is entitled. The ball is now in Stanford’s court.