Never trust a man with a dodgy tache

    

OK, so maybe "Sir" Allen Stanford isn't as bad as Hitler, but the chiselling little crook might end up having the same disastrous impact on the West Indies as the Führer had on the Wehrmacht.

With comic timing the news of his downfall broke midway through the third Test on his modern-day fiefdom of Antigua, yet another nail in the coffin of ECB chairman Giles Clarke, the Lord Haw-Haw of cricket.

Of course, there are those of us who'd warned the board about this man long ago...

The sight of a grubby, uncouth billionaire descending on Lord's with $20 million in $50 bills was just too distasteful for words.

Old Father Time would have been aghast at the vulgar spectacle unfolding beneath his eyes; it just wasn't cricket.

Fears, too, for the West Indies Cricket Board, already reeling from the farcical goings on at the Sir Viv Richards Stadium last week and subsequent abandonment of the second Test.

The irony would not have been lost on the legendary Antiguan, one of many cricketing greats seduced by the Texan fraudster last June. Hardly Sir Viv's finest week.

So what next? A change of leadership at the ECB, a complete severing of ties with the Stanford money and the chain gang for the man who nearly broke cricket.

A welcome opportunity, also, for Test cricket to regain its place as the eminence grice of the game.

• Cricinfo: Latest breaking news and latest press reaction
• November 2008: England thrashed in Stanford match
• October 2008: Stanford gets jiggy with the CWAGs