Now a further twist in the Stanford cricket news story is his involvement with the Senator Bill Nelson controversy. It would seem that Stanford Financial Group and employees were major contributors to the campaign donations made to the Senator. According to reports Dan McLaughlin, a spokesman for Senator Nelson said, "Based on the fact that Mr. Stanford has been indicted in a fraud case, I will give to charity any campaign contributions from him or his employees."

Only a few months ago Stanford’s investment strategy was being described as ‘sure and steady’, so now there is a lot of speculation about ‘what went wrong’. Admittedly this is a person who is crazy about cricket and had dreams of making it a world sport. His annual Caribbean Twenty/20 tournament for $28 million a year, and a winner-takes-all $20 million challenge match between his own team, the Stanford All-Stars XI, and the England national side last November was designed to draw attention of the rest of the world to cricket, more particularly the attention of the Americans.  The Stanford 20/20 for 20 however failed to make much impact on the lucrative U.S. TV market which was apparently a key business objective, and the escapade reportedly cost the billionaire $40 million.

What Stanford was also dreaming of, was to give competition to the wildly successful Indian Premier League by creating his own tournament to rival the IPL. To this end Stanford was in discussion with England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to sponsor an international tournament in England this summer, involving England, West Indies, Sri Lanka and New Zealand, and a prospective Twenty/20 league in the U.K.

Stanford was being seen as a force to be reckoned with in international cricket, and someone who was giving competition to the Indian subcontinent as being the epicentre for the game of cricket. India already produces 80% of the income generated by cricket worldwide. The Stanford initiative (to say nothing of his billions of dollars) was being seen as a counter point to redistribute the balance in world cricket and make it less skewed in favour of India. That hope, needless to say, seems to fast be vanishing now, with Stanford’s alleged fraud making cricket news headlines the world over.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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