The arrest of Sir Allen Stanford surely brings to a dramatic close the short and fractious relationship between the brash Texan and the administrators of English cricket, an unlikely marriage when it was first mooted and one that was never likely to last.

Sir Allen, who had long used the sporting pursuits of the wealthy, such as golf and polo, as a means of branding his financial services businesses, saw in the shortened ”Twenty20” version of cricket a chance to advance his name in the US.