Sherman McCoy - for those who don't know The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe's novel about Wall Street excess in 1980s New York - was a "Master of the Universe". Stupendously rich and assured, McCoy could not conceive of any situation that he couldn't charm or buy his way out of. Sherman's rise had been inexorable. The gods, however, decided that Sherman's fall from grace should be equally spectacular. Driving home from the airport one evening, he took a wrong turning and found himself in the urban dystopia of the Bronx. Sherman then accidentally ran over a black person from the ghetto, but rather than admit the accident, he sped back into Manhattan, hoping that escaping the crime scene would wash the sins off his hands. Disaster followed. A journalist investigated the case, then someone traced his licence plate and Sherman's world began to fall apart. He certainly made huge mistakes, but he was also the victim of a bizarre sequence of bad breaks. There must be times when Clarke feels his decision to strike a deal with Stanford, who is now accused of an $8 billion fraud, was the moment when he took a wrong turn into the burnt-out warehouses and insurance frauds of the Bronx.  

Why was he seduced by Stanford? Partly, having failed to negotiate a deal with the Indian Premier League in 2008, Clarke hoped to use Stanford's millions to keep the England players onside. But it runs deeper than that. Clarke has always contrasted his own entrepreneurial gift with English cricket's serial ineffectual amateurishness. He regarded the Texan billionaire as a kindred spirit. Who else could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Stanford, look him in the eye - man to man, Sherman to Sherman - and recognise a shared entrepreneurial genius? The Stanford saga appealed to Clarke's vision of himself as well as his vision for English cricket.