The Stanford Superstars made the quickest US$1 million of any group of cricketers in history after thrashing England by 10 wickets in the Stanford Twenty20 finale on Saturday.
Chasing a target of just 100 runs, the Superstars, a collection of experienced and promising West Indian players, pulverised England with more than seven overs to spare.
Superstars captain Chris Gayle had the privilege of hitting the winning runs, when he lofted Andrew Flintoff for the last of his five sixes in an unbeaten 65 off 45 balls over long-on to spark tumultuous celebrations around the Stanford Cricket Ground.
PHOTO: AFP
The victory meant that all members of the Superstars XI became instant millionaires, pocketing exactly US$1 million each.
Meanwhile a further US$1 million was split between the Superstars squad players who didn’t play on Saturday and the victorious coaching staff.
The remaining prize money in the US$20 million pot will be shared between the the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
But the England team got nothing after losing this winner-takes-all clash.
There had been much talk from both within and outside the England camp about the correctness of a national side taking part in an “exhibition” match for such a staggering sum.
And series backer Allen Stanford was forced to apologize after being pictured with Emily Prior, the pregnant wife of England wicket-keeper Matt, sitting on his knee during a warm-up match last weekend.
England captain Kevin Pietersen said the “nonsense” had been a distraction.
“During the week we haven’t been concentrating on the cricket, there’s been a lot of nonsense during the week and we haven’t concentrated on the cricket,” Pietersen told Sky Sports.
Officials at the ECB have signed a five-year contract with Stanford for the team’s participation in this event and Pietersen added: “We’re going to have to buy into the competition a lot more.”
Stanford, the man behind the Caribbean’s domestic Twenty20 tournament, said he hoped this victory would provide a springboard for renewed West Indies success at the international level.
“Three years ago we started an experiment to get young kids who were going elsewhere back into cricket and to reward the best players in the Caribbean for their professional skills,” the Antigua-based Texan said.
“We’re doing it, the results are here tonight. We will beat anybody in the world with this team. We are back, we’re going to take the world again. This program is working,” he said.
England had been dismissed for just 99 in one ball short of their permitted 20 overs, after choosing to bat under the lights on a hard, easy-paced pitch.
Andre Fletcher, who finished on 32 not out, smashed four consecutive boundaries off Stuart Broad in the second over of the Superstars’ innings.
Gayle subsequently destroyed Stephen Harmison in a sensational fifth over that cost England’s premier fast bowler 22 runs and concluded with the Test left-hander middling two straight hits for six.
Earlier, England’s batsmen paid a heavy price for cavalier batting against mean, purposeful bowling supported by sharp fielding.
Samit Patel’s 22 was the top score in an innings where only two other batsmen — Matt Prior (12) and Paul Collingwood (10) — got to double figures.
Man-of-the-match Darren Sammy took two wickets to get rid of Owais Shah, brilliantly caught in the deep by Dave Mohammed, and Pietersen, who was bowled round his legs for just seven by the medium-pacer.
The fixture brought the curtain down on the inaugural Super Series, which also featured Trinidad and Tobago, the reigning Caribbean Twenty20 champions and their English counterparts Middlesex.
North Korea’s FIFA Under-17 Women’s World Cup-winning team on Saturday received a heroes’ welcome back in the capital, Pyongyang, with hundreds of people on the streets to celebrate their success. They had defeated Spain on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the U17 World Cup final in the Dominican Republic on Nov. 3. It was the second global title in two months for secretive North Korea — largely closed off to the outside world; they also lifted the FIFA U20 Women’s World Cup in September. Officials and players’ families gathered at Pyongyang International Airport to wave flowers and North Korea flags as the
Taiwan’s top table tennis player Lin Yun-ju made his debut in the US professional table tennis scene by taking on a new role as a team’s co-owner. On Wednesday, Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), founded in September last year, announced on its official Web site that Lin had become part of the ownership group of the Princeton Revolution, one of the league’s eight teams. MLTT chief executive officer Flint Lane described Lin’s investment as “another great milestone for table tennis in America,” saying that the league’s “commitment to growth and innovation is drawing attention from the best in the sport, and we’re
Coco Gauff of the US on Friday defeated top-ranked Aryna Sabalenka 7-6 (7/4), 6-3 to set up a showdown with Olympic champion Zheng Qinwen in the final of the WTA Finals, while in the doubles, Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching was eliminated. Gauff generated six break points to Belarusian Sabalenka’s four and built on early momentum in the opening set’s tiebreak that she carried through to the second set. She is the youngest player at 20 to make the final at the WTA Finals since Denmark’s Caroline Wozniacki in 2010. Zheng earlier defeated Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic 6-3, 7-5 to book
For King Faisal, a 20-year-old winger from Ghana, the invitation to move to Brazil to play soccer “was a dream.” “I believed when I came here, it would help me change the life of my family and many other people,” he said in Sao Paulo. For the past year and a half, he has been playing on the under-20s squad for Sao Paulo FC, one of South America’s most prominent clubs. He and a small number of other Africans are tearing across pitches in a country known as the biggest producer and exporter of soccer stars in the world, from Pele to Neymar. For
RSS