Paul Collingwood says the prospect of England’s players becoming dollar millionaires for winning the Stanford Twenty20 match could be a “scary” proposition for the sport.
The England side stand to earn £500,000 each if they beat a West Indies all-stars team in Antigua on November 1, a fixture which will be an annual event for five years and bankrolled by Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford.
But as captain Collingwood prepares for this evening’s International Twenty20 at Old Trafford against New Zealand - both sides compete for £7,000 prize-money in total - he says he is both excited and uncomfortable at the prospect of a future jackpot. “That’s the scary thing about the whole situation because there’s not anything on the game,” he said. “It’s not a World Cup, it’s not the Ashes and when you’re growing up as a kid that’s what you dream about.”
Although most of England’s side have featured in the Twenty20 Cup, only Dimitri Mascarenhas has been in the lucrative IPL while New Zealand’s Daniel Vettori, Scott Styris, Ros Taylor, Jacob Oram, Kyle Mills and Brendon McCullum have had extensive IPL play.
England (from): PD Collingwood (capt.), LJ Wright, IR Bell, KP Pietersen, OA Shah, TR Ambrose (wkt.), AD Mascarenhas, GP Swann, SC Broad, RJ Sidebottom, JM Anderson, RS Bopara, CT Tremlett, AN Cook.
New Zealand (from): DL Vettori (capt.), BB McCullum (wkt), JM How, PG Fulton, RPL Taylor, SB Styris, DR Flynn, JDP Oram, JAH Marshall, KD Mills, JAH Marshall, JS Patel, MR Gillespie, MJ Mason.
Umpires: IJ Gould and PJ Hartley. Third umpire: RA Kettleborough. Match referee: Javagal Srinath (India).
