Stanford mistake was more than just Giles Clarke's

With the ECB facing legal action to return around £2.2 million (US$3 million) received from the disgraced financier Allen Stanford Scyld Berry, in the Telegraph, revisits the episode and argues that is was the counties, as much as Giles Clarke, that wanted a dip in Stanford's pool of gold.

Worse still, the ECB and Cricket Australia have just combined to desecrate the only thing left in international cricket that has been sacred. Staging Ashes series in England in 2013 and 2015, with another in Australia in between, devalues a tradition going back 130 years – over-killing which shows that they cannot be entrusted with guarding the flame. Their talk of 'maximising the Ashes brand’ was simply disgusting.

When it comes to getting into bed with Stanford, however, I do not think that the ECB under Clarke’s leadership can be singled out for exceptional criticism — any more than other people and organisations shoving their snouts into the trough in the Indian summer of western capitalism in 2008. From financiers to bankers to batsmen, the West was a Gadarene herd with only one thing on its mind.