( L - R ) GAYLE, MARSHALL, POWELL, TAYLOR

FOUR JAMAICANS stand to win a massive cash windfall after being named in the 17-man Stanford Superstars squad that will face an England XI in the Stanford 20/20 for US$20 million in November.

West Indies skipper Chris Gayle, batsman Xavier Marshall and pacemen Daren Powell and Jerome Taylor were the four named by Sir Vivian Richards, chairman of the Stanford Superstars selection panel, for the match due to be played on November 1 at the Stanford Cricket Ground in Antigua.

Winning team

Only the winning team will get to share the cash prize, with the 11 active participants each receiving US$1 million. Another US$1 million is to be shared between the 12th man and the other non-playing squad members and a further US$1 million will be split between the winning management team.

The England and Wales Cricket Board and the West Indies Cricket Board will divide up the remainder of the US$20 million prizemoney.

The other 13 players selected to the West Indies squad were Lionel Baker (Montserrat), Sulieman Benn (Barbados), Dwayne Bravo, Rayad Emrit, Dave Mohammed, Kieron Pollard (Trinidad and Tobago), Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Lennox Cush (Guyana), Andre Fletcher (Grenada), Chad Hampson, Sylvester Joseph (Antigua and Barbuda) and Lindon James (St Vincent and the Grenadines).

The squad was chosen by a panel which comprised Sir Everton Weekes, Curtly Ambrose, Lance Gibbs, Richie Richardson, Andy Roberts, Courtney Walsh and chairman Sir Vivian.

The panel announced the squad at the conclusion of a training camp that was held in Antigua over the last two weeks. There were 31 participating players at the camp, excluding Chanderpaul, who missed it in order to honour his English county contract with Durham, but he nevertheless remained eligible for selection.

Sir Vivian is confident the panel has made the right selection in picking the team that could win the richest team prize for a single sporting match.

Doing justice

"We believe this squad is very capable of doing justice to its selection to the Stanford Superstars squad to face England for the unprecedented purse of US$20million," Sir Vivian said yesterday.

Some fresh, young players have been included along with the more established players who have the big-game experience in order to provide the Stanford Superstars with the impetus to win the high-stakes prize.

"There are several familiar faces in this Stanford Superstars squad, but there are some exciting new additions such as Lindon James, Lionel Baker and Chad Hampson, and this was due to the fact that there were some high-quality performances from these individuals in the Stanford 20/20 tournaments and they were also very impressive in the just concluded Stanford Superstars camp," Sir Vivian said.

All the selected squad members have been provided with contracts for review and have 14 days to confirm their participation in the much anticipated, multimillion-dollar match. The selection panel will reconvene at a later date to select the captain and vice-captain.