We look at Sir Allen Stanford - the man whose vision set up the richest match in cricket history.
Skysports.com looks at Sir Allen Stanford - the man whose vision set up the Stanford Super Series including the richest match in cricket history
Despite the acrimony and confusion surrounding sponsorship of the Stanford Super Series over the last month, there was never any serious doubt the event would go ahead.
Sir Allen Stanford is a man used to getting his own way.
The self-styled saviour of West Indies cricket set his heart on a $20million, winner-takes-all clash involving his own team of superstars as part of his ongoing attempts to rejuvenate the sport in the Caribbean.
And, although many at the home of cricket found it distasteful, that is exactly what he got when he flew his helicopter into Lord's in June to unveil England as the opponents.
And with a five-year commitment to the series in place, Stanford has pledged in excess of $100million of his own money to the project.
So when a contract wrangle threatened to derail the Super Series, with Digicel claiming their deal with the West Indies Cricket Board entitled them to greater sponsorship rights, there was little doubt Stanford would find a solution.
Billionaire Stanford made his money first in property, then finance, quickly building up an empire which, under the Stanford Financial Group, spans six continents.
Having been a citizen of Antigua and Barbuda for some 10 years, his first dalliance with the game came in the form of his own Twenty20 tournament between the islands of the region, held for the first time in 2006.
Not a man to do things by halves, he built his own stadium to host the tournament, and he is not shy about the effect he believes the competition has had.
Profit
A profile on the website of his own company, Stanford Financial, reads: "His Stanford 20/20 Cricket Tournaments are reigniting West Indies' passion for cricket, uniting the region, generating considerable profit for local businesses and reaching a wide international TV audience."
There is no doubt Stanford has an interest in seeing the game flourish in the region.
Such has been Stanford's impact on the game in the Caribbean that some are calling for him to be put in charge of West Indies cricket as a whole.
The exposure the Stanford brand will receive is, of course, an attractive extra and the Texan has his eye on markets cricket has yet to penetrate.
"If you think back to the best promoter of sports in all time, that was Muhammad Ali," he said after the event was first unveiled.
"The Rumble in the Jungle and the Thriller in Manilla, those types of events generated worldwide interest even (with) people that weren't interested in boxing.
"We think this can generate interest to people that may not even understand or know much about cricket, just because of the uniqueness of this event, that then will get hooked on cricket."
Whatever his motives, the man who admits he finds Test cricket "boring" continues to worry the sport's purists with his rhetoric.
"This is entertainment, just like going to a movie," he told the
Observer.
"The purists lose sight of that - it's entertainment, that's it. If you don't get that then you're living in the sixties.
"Dancing, music, Twenty20, this is the way we play it, for entertainment.
"You go to any sporting event in the world right now, it's being driven by television.
"And people aren't going to turn on if you do something dry and boring, there's got to be all kinds of stuff happening.
"If something doesn't give you instant excitement and enthusiasm, you're not going to watch it."
The very notion of "instant excitement" may be anathema to those who believe the complexities and subtleties of Test cricket are what make the sport great.
But they may be an increasingly small minority - and the Texan has an eye on his compatriots, who are not noted for their patience.
"Cracking America is not driving this product," he said. "But make no mistake, it is important, very important."
Exhibition
There is little doubt England were not his first-choice opponents for this grand exhibition of crash-bang cricket.
World Twenty20 champions India, Australia, South Africa and Sri Lanka were all reportedly sounded out before he finally settled on England.
But now he sees the England and Wales Cricket Board as his partners in both his rejuvenation project in the Caribbean and, perhaps, in a bid for power in cricket's world order.
The ECB, he reported, were "all smiles" upon receiving his offer - and not just because of the dizzying sums of money.
He continued: "(There were) a lot of smiles, a lot of glee, a lot of happiness for the fact that someone has the same motives and goals for cricket that they do - to see it evolve in the right way.
"Mine being for the West Indies, unfortunately we're down at the bottom.
"My first and foremost is to see that we get our boys back on top of the game.
"We need to get schools in the West Indies promoting cricket at a primary level. We can take what has been done so successfully in England and export that to the West Indies.
"The English want to take, I think, the right role and that, in my estimation, should be the leadership role.
"With the organisation structure and the overall management they have in place worldwide they should be the driver for the future of the sport and Twenty20 is going to be the future."
