“You get the feeling cricket will never be the same again.” So said England’s Matt Prior. He was referring to the inaugural Stanford Series, the Twenty20 tournament that begins in Antigua on Saturday. The sense of a game at the crossroads is keenly felt.

The Stanford Series, which features Middlesex, the Twenty20 Cup winners, culminates in a week with a winner-takes-all bout between England and a West Indies “Stanford Superstars” XI, which will earn the victors an unprecedented $1m a man. The benefactor is Sir Allen Stanford, a Texan billionaire domiciled in Antigua, who plans to stage the event for the next five years.