Elliotkidner

Stuart Broad says thank goodness England lost Allen Stanford's $20 million cricket match in 2008, a game paid for by a man later convicted of running a $7 billion Ponzi scheme. Each of the 11 England players on the field that night in Antigua would have taken home $1 million. They were bowled out for 99, lost by 10 wickets and went home with nothing. In the video below, Broad remembers the team photo before the game. Stanford walked in, took the seat in the middle of the England shirts and sat there, as Broad puts it, "knowing that he's bought the England cricket team." During one of the warm-up games, the stadium's big screen cut to Stanford in the stand with the players' wives around him. Matt Prior's wife was the one on Stanford's knee, and the whole ground watched it with the England team out on the field. One of the players in the film says the wives had no real choice, because they were his guests. Another voice in it calls that night the moment the players "first properly realised what they had got themselves involved with." The night before the final, the squad of 16 worked out that only the 11 picked to play would get $1 million each. "Is it fair you get nothing?" Broad asks. Luke Wright says they spent the evening talking about how to split 20 million instead of the cricket, and settled it with a handshake in the team room, so all 16 would share, playing or not. On 1 November 2008 England made 99, and the Stanford Superstars knocked off the runs without losing a wicket. Wright sat in the dressing room with Broad and a beer while the winners' names were called up to collect their money. "For every firework," he says, "there was a million dollars to someone else." The money was never really Stanford's to give. His bank in Antigua sold certificates of deposit and told savers their money sat in safe, liquid investments. The England and Wales Cricket Board had signed a 5-year, $100 million deal with him for these matches. In February 2009 the SEC charged him, the board suspended talks, and in 2012 he was sentenced to 110 years. For me the players are the least to blame here. A county cricketer was on about £30,000 to £40,000 a year, and almost anyone says yes to $1 million for one night. The board was the one with the job of asking where a Texan banker found $20 million to give away. If a deal pays far more than anyone else would, find out where the money comes from before you sign. At his sentencing, Stanford told the judge he never ran a Ponzi scheme. Broad was 22 that night, and now says, "thank goodness we didn't win that money." Who do you blame for the $20 million night, the board that signed with Stanford or the players who agreed to play for his cash? I post one story like this every day: a famous name, the money they made, and who ended up with it.