Black Bat Law Stumps Stanford

The England and Wales Cricket Board and MCC will today resume talks with representatives of Sir Allen Stanford intended to finalise a deal worth in excess of $100m (£52m) for a series of winner-takes-all Twenty20 matches bankrolled by the Texan billionaire.

The three sides are agreed on a series of one-off matches between an England XI and a Stanford West Indies XI for the next five years and an annual quadrangular Twenty20 tournament to be staged at Lord's, but a recent change to the laws of the game has angered Stanford and jeopardized his involvement.

The new law outlaws the use of colored bats, a change that would mean the trademark black bats used in Stanford's existing Twenty20 tournament are illegal. He believes the bats are central to his branding and wants the law change rescinded. Officials from the ECB and MCC, which is responsible for the laws of the game, spent yesterday locked in talks at Lord's without reaching a compromise.

They will resume today, however, and the ECB is confident that a deal will be done by next week, and is hopeful that the prospect of a lucrative one-off pay-day will help appease centrally contracted players prohibited from taking part in the IPL.

The ECB, meanwhile, has denied it is softening its stance on the rebel Indian Cricket League after the national selector Geoff Miller revealed he had not ruled out a surprise return for the Nottinghamshire wicketkeeper Chris Read, who signed up for the ICL late last year but has not played for England since January 2007.

Three months after suggesting that any England cricketer involved with the ICL would be damaging his international prospects, Miller told BBC Radio that Read's name was discussed before today's first Test and he would "continue to be discussed". But an ECB spokesman insisted that the board's stance on England's ICL quartet of Read, Darren Maddy, Vikram Solanki and Paul Nixon had not changed. "We are against unauthorized cricket for three reasons," he said. "One, they do not have anti-doping or anti-corruption measures. Two, they do not invest in grassroots cricket. Three, they undermine the broadcast rights of ICC member nations."