Indecent Proposal

And so to Tuesday and our contemplation of Cricket’s latest attempt to prostitute itself like a five quid hooker with Saturday’s forthcoming Stanford Twenty20 match between England and West Indies XIs.

In danger of making the over-the-top gaudiness of the IPL look classy and refined, Stanford’s winner takes all greed fest tag line ‘One night, one shot, $20 million’ also borrows a Highlander-style ‘There can be only one’ to add to its patent ridiculousness.

So what’s next? A live Kurgen-style beheading for the bowler who concedes the million dollar boundary? Why not? That’s bound to get the crowds in and seems tailor made for the attention span of a modern audience.

The Stanford series was supposed to be the ECB’s sweetener to distract the England players from the lure of the IPL in February. But now the whole cricket world’s in hock to India anyway (including both the Aussies and Sri Lanka), it’s become just another cash cow appetiser, before Freddie and KP etc. inevitably depart for Lalit land anyway.

Could it get any more ridiculous? Of course it could! How about Sir Allen allegedly ‘getting close to’ as the BBC put it (or ‘copping a feel of’ as we’d say) of some of the England players WAGs while the players themselves were busy out in the field on Sunday?

It’s cricket’s very own Indecent Proposal and just the kind of story to underline the game’s credibility as it goes galloping over the horizon in a welter of black bats and ridiculous pyjamas.