ECB And Pca Continue Stanford Talks
The ECB and the PCA have issued a joint statement saying that negotiations with Sir Allen Stanford regarding a new Twenty20 tournament are continuing.
England’s centrally-contracted national team players are negotiating over their share of any future Twenty20 winner-takes-all prize money funded by Stanford as laid out in the proposals for the tournament.
The deal with the ECB is believed to include five one-off encounters in Antigua with the winners receiving £10m each time.
The first Twenty20 match is set to take place on 1st November at Stanford’s private ground where he is based in the Caribbean with the deal also set to include an annual international quadrangular tournament in England.
The series could be worth about £100m to the English game which is looking at alternatives to the lucrative new Indian Premier League.
The deal is expected to be agreed with Stanford within a week with the only sticking point appearing to be the use of Stanford’s signature black bats, but a compromise appears to have been reached whereby they will be used in Antigua – where the matches will be deemed unofficial – but not in the four-nation event in London.
