A quick question: If you had ten million dollars and wanted to help West Indian cricket, would you:

a) Invest in better sports resources for schools and sports centres, set up intensive coaching programmes for young fans of the game, support the age grouped national sides and subsidise ticket prices for domestic cricket in the West Indies?

or

b) Spend the lot on a single Twenty20 match?

If you answered 'a', congratulations, you have proved you want to help West Indies cricket and have a decent amount of common sense. If you answered ‘b’, well done, you are Sir Allen Stanford.

Don’t get me wrong, the 'Winner Takes All' match scheduled between England and the West Indies is likely to be spectacular, interesting and raise interest in the game. But as far as helping West Indian cricket goes, it doesn’t seem to be Stanford’s primary objective.

Perhaps the West Indies Cricket Board are delighted by the scheduled match and can think of no other way they’d rather the money be spent, but I suspect Stanford’s cash could be put to better use.

There is a danger of matches like these alienating the top flight from their domestic counterparts and resentment brewing, not something that would be beneficial to the game. Then there is the fact that Stanford’s match is, once again, a Twenty20 match.

The IPL capitalised on what is a fun, trendy game that is better suited to bright kits, glitter and glamour than a serious sporting mindset. The IPL was fun, watchable and entertaining, but Twenty20 isn’t the future of cricket and with falling attendance in this year’s domestic competition, the game’s fifth, it seems that the original hype is dying down.

A 'Winner Takes All' Test? Maybe even a timeless Test, a true challenge for both sides, both would provide some of the world’s best cricket. But a Twenty20 match? It doesn’t, or shouldn’t, carry the same weight.

Far from showing what a sporting genius he is, Sir Allen’s comments that cricket could be bigger than football show a painful lack of understanding of the sporting hierarchy in the UK. Football was, is and will forever be, the country’s No.1 sport and an English Premier League would not be as successful as the IPL for one very simple reason:

England already has an English Premier League; it is one of the best in the world, there just isn’t any cricket in it.

Cricket will hopefully stay in its happy little niche in English sport for many, many years to come, but it will never be the UK’s No.1  sport, even in its Twenty20 format.

Footballers play through rain, the offside rule is ten times easier to understand than the lbw rule, and about 100 times easier to understand than Duckworth Lewis - and most importantly, football can be played anywhere there is a ball and makeshift goalposts and has millions of devoted followers.

Nothing will ever displace football in England, no matter how many times we cricket fans complain that the start of the football season ruins the Pro40 coverage.

Sir Allen Stanford’s game will be fun to watch and an interesting spectacle, but his claims of ‘saving’ West Indies cricket and launching English cricket to stratospheric popularly are a little far fetched. But then again, when you’re a billionaire no one is going to want to set you straight.