As Bell spoke, anger was growing among county executives about the ECB’s handling of the Pietersen affair and the damage it had done to English cricket, with one insider saying it had been a greater embarrassment than the association with disgraced Texan fraudster Allen Stanford. “This is a damn sight worse than Stanford. Then we got sucked into a Ponzi scheme. This is of our own making. The reputation of the ECB and its leading figures is so low I am not sure how they are going to get it back.”