Before the CPL! Allen Stanford
There is something uncomfortable about history that we in the Caribbean do not like to admit. Sometimes an outsider sees the value in us before we see it in ourselves. Look at Christopher Columbus , then Stanford. Condemning a man does not mean pretending he did not change history. The same uncomfortable truth applies to Allen Stanford. Stanford was a crook. There is no polite way to say it. He operated a massive fraud, stole billions of dollars from investors and destroyed lives. He belongs in the history books as a convicted criminal.
But there is another chapter of the Stanford story that the Caribbean should not erase. He saw something in Caribbean cricket that many of us had failed to see. Twenty20 cricket did not originate with Stanford. England introduced the format. But Stanford understood what Twenty20 could become in the Caribbean. He understood that cricket was not simply cricket anymore. It was entertainment. It was theatre. It was national pride, music, lights, money, television and drama compressed into a few explosive hours. So this American outsider, who was not steeped in the traditional culture of Caribbean cricket, looked at what we had and said, “Look at this gold mine”
And he was right.
Then two from Antigua sold the rights for eternity. 😡
