The interests to be protected are those relating to the Future Tours Programme (FTP) broadcast rights belonging to ESPN-Star Sports. After the difficulty in interpreting what was included in the FTP prior to the West Indies tour of England, it is clear which member's concerns are being addressed. Since Stanford's plan includes a television series, broadcast rights must be protected, lest they slip into the hands of One Caribbean Media, or Sports Max, companies with connections to present and past WICB presidents.

The ICC's concerns are not the only ones being aired. Carib Beer, a regional cricket sponsor, has fired brazen and bizarre questions at the tournament. Colin Murray, sponsor and events manager, objected to the Stanford tournament's timing, in January-February 2008, as he felt it would take precedence over their four-day regional competition, usually scheduled then. Alleging that Stanford had his own agenda and was more interested in his tournament than the development of West Indies cricket, Murray asked: "How is Stanford investing this money to ensure the West Indies Board operations are stable and will continue to benefit from his involvement? What type of funding will the West Indies Cricket Board be getting out of this?"

Murray could well have asked the same questions of his own firm, which has made its Carib girls celebrities at cricket grounds. Has Carib Beer invested in developmental programmes in any sustained way, if at all? If those same questions were asked of his company, he would very likely be the spokesman coming out to say that the responsibility for the development of West Indies cricket lies with the WICB and not a sponsor, and he might very well inflate a Carib bottle and have some Carib girls wine in front of it to emphasise his point.

The Trinidad Guardian, a paper belonging to the Ansa McAl Group which also owns Carib, wrote an editorial asking the same questions. "... Stanford must not be allowed to upstage an event that prepares the regional team for international cricket. Test cricket remains the real thing," it said. "Stanford must allow the four-day tournament its way, as soon after that, the Australians will be here. His tournament would hardly be what is needed to prepare."

It advises the WICB to let Stanford know that he is only welcome if what he is doing is not in conflict with what the WICB is doing. One could say that given the type of practice the West Indies team had before its English tour -- none -- that there is no conflict here. But that would be facetious.

The editorial ends even more farcically. "And since he seems obsessed with only dealing with the cream of the crop, he owes it to the WICB to put something back into the other end of the scale, where the development is concerned."