Patrick Gibson, 41, was barely breathing and his legs were badly burned after the Marine Park lightning strike, witnesses said.

"His pants were burned. His tongue was out of his mouth and his eyes were rolled back in his head," said Kenneth Charles, 38.

Gibson was playing in his first game for the Brooklyn-based Stars United team when the wild weather chased players off the field at Avenue S and E. 32nd St. just after 4 p.m.

Friends said the Brooklyn man had lagged behind the group to collect equipment when he was hit.

"It started raining. The thunder cracked, and he just fell," said witness Dominic Audain, 22, a cricket player on the opposing team, Middlesex Cricket Country Club.

"I thought he was stunned or shocked," Audain said. "Ten seconds passed and he wasn't moving. That's when we ran over."

nzamam-ul-Haq and up to seven disaffected members of the Lahore Badshahs ICL franchise are in discussions with an American entrepreneur who hopes to establish an international Twenty20 tournament in New York City.

...

Mir, 32, has lined up a three-year staging deal with the minor-league baseball team, Staten Island Yankees. Using a franchise and auction system similar to the IPL, he hopes to draw up six "international" sides - Premium Pakistan, Premium Indians, Premium West Indies, Premium World and Premium America - the final side drawn from the best of the talent on show from approximately 15 million cricket fans who already live in the USA. A spokesman for the Yankees confirmed that they were in talks, adding that they were "very excited" at the prospect of bringing cricket to the city.

"It is a cricket revolution in America," Mr Mir told Cricinfo. "The venue is an absolute fit for the historic nature of this event. It has a capacity of approximately 10,000 spectators and has state-of-the-art facilities, and every spectator can view the beautiful Manhattan skyline, the Statue of Liberty and the Hudson River from their seat."

Mir added that he had lined up an agent in England who would help recruit players for the World XI, and that he had been in negotiations with the former West Indies captain, Richie Richardson, whom he hopes will act as both a coach and a recruiter for a potential West Indies team. [LINK]

The Securities and Exchange Commission, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and the Federal Bureau of Investigations are looking into the eccentric money man for alleged fraud involving his Stanford International Bank, which claims to have $8.5 billion in assets and some 30,000 investors.

Sir Stanford--he was the first American to receive knighthood from the government of Antigua and is infamous for his efforts to revive West Indian cricket--has managed to report shockingly consistent returns for years. Even in 2008, when Wall Street was hit across the board, he managed to make a 6% profit on his portfolio.