Of all the statements recently released regarding Allen Stanford, perhaps the most grimly amusing was chief executive David Collier’s revelation that the England Cricket Board had ‘determined to suspend’ relations with its former sugar daddy—analogous in some respects to drowning passengers of the Titanic determining to suspend relations with the White Star Line.
Contracts are easy to shred; associations linger. And reputation, hard-won, easily lost, is the devil to repair. ‘The best of intentions’, which is ECB chairman Giles Clarke’s self-exculpation for cosying up to Stanford, are immaterial: Wall Street had leaders of impeccable motivations who are no more employable for them today. Essex chairman Nigel Hilliard’s claim that due diligence on Stanford was on the basis of ‘capacity to pay’, meanwhile, suggests that English cricket was fortunate not to see the Medellin Cartel Sunday League.
Managing cricket is about preserving value as well as leveraging price. At a time when the ECB is earnestly seeking a replacement for Vodafone, the continued presences of Clarke and Collier imply that they will whore their cricket team to anyone with ‘capacity to pay’—and who would wish to be that sponsor? English cricket has been damaged by association with Stanford; it is now damaged by association with a chairman and chief executive who have such a narrow and technocratic understanding of their duties.
But while the bucks have stopped, the buck hasn’t quite. One of the ECB’s sternest critics, indeed, might already be felt to have protested too much. English cricket has ‘nothing but egg on its face’, says Sir Ian Botham, adding that the chairman himself is toast: ‘Giles Clarke pushed for this and he has to face the music. He was the one telling everyone Stanford was the way to go—and it has been a huge mess’.
Some, however, might recall the Sir Ian Botham who in June 2008 blessed the Twenty20 for 20 launch at Lord’s with his presence, and described Stanford as ‘the new Kerry Packer’. Packer ‘shook the whole place up’, he reminisced. ‘I think what Stanford is doing is shaking it up again.’ Are these two Sir Ian Bothams by any chance related, to paraphrase Private Eye? I think we should be told.
While we’re at it, was that not by Botham’s side his old mucker Sir Vivian Richards, a juxtaposition bringing back memories of their 1980s entanglement with manager manqué and Rasta rags fancier Tim Hudson—an entanglement which Botham conceded, in hindsight, had made him an ‘international joke’?
Sir Viv, in fact, was part of a veritable round table of cricket knights who drew a monthly fee reported to be US$10 000 for sitting in Stanford’s ‘Legends’ group: Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Everton Weekes, Curtly Ambrose, Joel Garner, Lance Gibbs, Gordon Greenidge, Wes Hall, Desmond Haynes, Richie Richardson, Andy Roberts and Courtney Walsh. Walsh even enjoyed Stanford’s endorsement when he narrowly failed to become chairman of the Jamaica Cricket Association in October 2008.
Which is not to say the aforesaid luminaries received anything but the dampest and whiffiest mushroom treatment. But it does mean that, however innocently and inadvertently, they colluded in the perpetration of what the Securities and Exchange Commission is calling a ‘fraud of shocking magnitude’. They were the baubles on a Christmas tree that turned out to be a man-eating plant.
Here, then, is an extreme example of the fakery inherent in sports sponsorship. Business craves the company of sport because it looks just a little cleaner, smells a little sweeter, stands just a little taller. And it was ever thus: recall that Gillette explained its support for England’s inaugural one-day domestic tournament by saying that cricket was a respectable game ‘played by gentlemen’.
It seems a harmless enough coalition of interests, or at least a soothingly familiar one, when a sports star stands there spruiking a car; we nod sleepily at the faint pretence that he actually possesses some superior automotive insight, and ignore the obvious reality that he has been paid for mouthing sentiments he is ill-equipped to verify and has little genuine reason to believe. It is not so harmless when athletes esteemed by generations appear to bless financial disasters that threaten regional economic devastation. The Stanford story is no more over than was the Titanic story when the waves closed over its stern.
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When it comes to distinguishing price and value, Australian cricket administrators have their moments too. The mid-February 2009 Twenty20 match between Australia and New Zealand was decided in the penultimate over by an outfield catch of quicksilver brilliance by Adam Voges. It was the sort of catch you wanted to see again and again, except that a video placed on YouTube was subsequently replaced with the advice: ‘This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by Cricket Australia’.
IP (intellectual property) has been the hot abbreviation in sports management for some years now. In the name of ‘monetising’ a sport’s ‘assets’, it usually leaves miserable, pettifogging, alienating restrictions in its wake. ‘Who owns Adam Voges’ catch?’ is a question that could tangle lawyers for months, if not years; if you love cricket, the question seems sour and sterile. Fortunately, wiser counsel has now prevailed: the video is back.
To be fair, these dilemmas are becoming more difficult to adjudicate, and grow exponentially more complicated when the website of a major media organisation links to and makes use of a video in the surrounds of advertising. Sooner or later, one suspects, sports organisations will have to decide whether the resources dedicated to chasing IP up hill and down dale justify themselves, or whether the revenues theoretically foregone earn themselves back in exposure and goodwill. Shane Warne’s bowling of Mike Gatting at Old Trafford in 1993 might not have become ‘the ball of the century’ had it been administered on a pay-per-view basis; as it is, cricket can hardly have been better advertised.
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Over the last few weeks, the surrounds of Melbourne have been laid waste by bushfires of unexampled fury. Overhead views of areas I know and love lie in unrecognisable ruin. Except that, every so often, the view from above reveals an expanse still faintly green: a sports oval, part of every community, home to the local cricket and football clubs, and now frequently the base for efforts to accommodate the displaced and traumatised. Meanwhile, after the example of the Australian team’s visit to the region, every second cricket club seems to be holding some fundraising activity for victims. Sport is usually something Australians celebrate, but at the moment it is showing rarely fathomed capacities as a source of solace.