England Cricket / Ralph Ellis / 19 February 2009 /

Stanford disaster has affected some of the West Indian squad directly and England look likely to profit, says Ralph Ellis.

Of course it's easy to be wise after the event, but there were clues about the strength of Allen Stanford's financial empire. For a start, why did an international bank with 50 billion dollars of investments in its care have an auditor on the second floor above a shop in Enfield?

The news that the man behind Twenty20 for $20million is on the run being accused of a fraud worth eight billion has topped off a disastrous week for West Indies cricket. The catastrophe over the Antigua outfield was a minor hiccup in comparison. All the papers this morning carry pictures of the locals queuing round the block to try to get their money back out of the banks. And the impact on future sponsorships at a time when the world is short of spare corporate finance will be massive.

But don't think this is an issue which only affects matters off the field. England's players might feel they had a stroke of luck in losing the autumn final of the dash for cash, especially when they learn the fate of five of the West Indies team who did collect their million dollars a man, winner-take-all prize money. They all got paid in full, but five of them were persuaded to reinvest the money with Stanford and now risk losing it all.

The Daily Mail's Paul Newman reveals this morning that Shivnarine Chanderpaul was one of those who gave his cash to Stanford so he could earn extra high interest with the Texan's organisation. The others are Ramnaresh Sarwan, Kieron Pollard, Sylvester Joseph and Dave Mohammed. Spinner Mohammed was the one whose mum's picture was all over the papers back in November at the end of a match which she thought had secured her son's future for life.

Chanderpaul might be the current number one in the world in the ICC batting rankings, but sadly he's learned he's bottom of the investment experts' lists. And there's no way the shock of losing that new found fortune won't affect him or the other players involved. Chanderpaul has been a forlorn looking figure on the pitch the last day or so, and as one of the world's top batsmen he was always going to be a key figure in today's fight to avoid England levelling the series. It was ironic that he and Sarwan were the two not-out batsmen overnight on whom most depended.

Sarwan began today as the leading scorer in the whole series on 248, and [1.6] to be the top West Indies batsman. If he does get affected by the situation it might make it worth backing skipper Chris Gayle at somewhere between [3.5] and [6.2] to bridge the 68 run gap between them.

It all makes an extra bit of value out of backing England to win the Test series - the price first thing this morning was [2.12] - and of thinking that Andrew Strauss and his team could finish up completely turning the tables from their 51 all out in the first Test. They were [4.1] to win it 2-1 and a tempting [5.4] to triumph in both Barbados and Trinidad as well as today.

Five things you might not know about Shivnarine Chanderpaul...

1. Born in Guyana from an Indian family, he's a big fan of Bollywood movies and a friend of actors Rishi Kapoor and Sunil Shetty.

2. He played the first of his 116 Tests in 1994 against England, and scored a 50 in 15 of his first 18 matches before finally getting a century against India.

3. He was accused of being a hypochondriac when missing matches through injury early in his career - doctors later discovered a piece of bone in his foot had been floating.

4. He was at the other end for much of the time when Brian Lara made his world record 375 - he was not out 75 when Lara's innings finally ended.

5. He once shot a policeman in the hand in an incident in Guyana, having mistaken him for a mugger.

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