Bob Willis told Sky Sports News England and West Indies will suffer if Allen Stanford loses interest.
'England and Windies to feel fall-out'
Allen Stanford's apparent disillusionment with cricket could have serious repercussions in the West Indies and England, Bob Willis told
Sky Sports News.
The Texan billionaire is, according to a newspaper report, ready to pull the plug on a five-year deal with the England and Wales Cricket Board to hold an annual 20m-dollar Twenty20 game in Antigua as well as a four-nation international Twenty20 tournament in England every summer.
Stanford is also a proposed sponsor of an English Premier League competition due to start in 2010, while the West Indian cricket authorities are even more heavily involved with the businessman.
On the up
Sky Sports expert Willis said: "The problem is that the promotion has been all about Allen Stanford and not about the game of cricket in the West Indies.
"And the West Indies board have perhaps been even more foolish than their English counterparts getting into bed with Stanford at a very difficult time for finances there.
"But their performance in the Stanford Super Series really did boost that West Indies team, and they did a very honourable job in the Test match down in Dunedin which has just finished.
"There were some good individual performances there and West Indies cricket is on the up and up at the moment. This a setback they certainly don't need."
As far as England are concerned, Stanford's millions were set to play a key part in persuading big-name stars such as Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff not to cram an Indian Premier League season into an already jam-packed calendar.
The ECB has not confirmed the report of Stanford's pull-out, but the rumours are hardly welcome barely 24 hours after they lost a major sponsor in Vodafone.
Sponsorship
Willis said: "It's going to be more and more difficult for smaller sports to get their hands on major sponsorships, so it's a difficult time for England.
"(ECB chairman) Giles Clarke is going to have to consider his position having led the counties by the nose down this route and also tried to keep the players sweet by saying: 'we don't want you going off to play in the IPL, we'll get you this extra cash from Allen Stanford'.
"If that money disappears there'll be more pressure on Giles Clarke to let the likes of Pietersen and Flintoff go off and play in the IPL in a very, very short window between the West Indies tour finishing at the beginning of May and the Twenty20 World Cup starting in England at the beginning of June. Is that what they really want their players doing after a busy winter?"
Pantomime
The seeds of doubt about Stanford, according to former Test star Willis, should have been sown during England's forgettable week in Antigua for the Stanford Super Series.
He said: "The game as a whole has to look after itself, and I think it's very dangerous to go along with American entrepreneurs who have no real feel for the traditions of cricket.
"That's what so upset England cricket followers and the journalists, in particular, who undermined his "pantomime" - as Lord MacLaurin called it - in the Caribbean.
"They didn't like what they saw at all, and I think that reflected on the England players because they didn't know why they were there in the end. It was simple - they were trying to win one million dollars each, but that didn't seem to sit very comfortably with them."
