ECB fear four counties will die if Ashes return to terrestrial TV

By Nick Hoult 655PM GMT nineteen March 2010

Party domestic England"s 2009 winners applaud feat over Australia - will destiny Ashes be shown on human TV again? Photo PA

Telegraph Sport understands a conference request sent by the England and Wales Cricket Board to the Department for Culture Media and Sport warned of waste of �137.4 million for the 2014-2017 report stipulate if the Ashes are private from negotiations.

The ECB claims such a dump would strike cricket at all levels and would lead to cuts in the array of senior manager contracts, a scrapping of the England Lions and opening programme squads, the odds of at slightest 4 counties going out of commercial operation as well as a rebate in grassroots initiatives.

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A winnow of counties is great headlines to those who disciple a rebate of first-class cricket. The common suspects, however, similar to Northants, Leicestershire and Derbyshire, are doubtful to be the ones to go the wall. Those counties work at profit, but it is a little of the incomparable Test-ground counties who are change the check for ground-expansion projects that would be majority at risk if the ECB total are an correct mural of a destiny but Skys millions.

Last year a row chaired by David Davies, the former senior manager executive of the Football Association, placed the Ashes, Wimbledon and a array of alternative competition events on a list of events that should be free-to-air in Britain.

That has sparked an heated turn of lobbying by assorted sports bodies with the ECB braggadocio the loudest voice and the majority to lose. Its promote stipulate with Sky is value about �260 million.

The ECB has outlayed scarcely �500,000 on authorised and consultancy fees in producing justification and a monetary stroke examination that stretches to some-more than 200 pages and was delivered to the DCMS bureau yesterday afternoon.

Sources prove that commentary from eccentric advisors Oliver and Ohlbaum, Deloitte and the National Economic Research Associates, show a dump of 48 per cent in approaching income from the subsequent promote understanding if the Government backs the Davies recommendations.

The total take in to comment the sponsorship benefits that would accumulate from Ashes Tests being shown on human television, that are likely to move in about �4.8 million.

Where the worry lies for the ECB, though, is that Ashes array shown on human radio reach a far wider audience. Their own justification shows that the 2005 Ashes win by Michael Vaughans group was watched on Channel 4 by a every day normal assembly of 2.2 million. Last year Sky pulled in 483,000 viewers.

It is the change in between larger bearing and the monetary stroke of inventory Ashes cricket that is the gist of the evidence and one that Ben Bradshaw, the cabinet member of state for Culture Media and Sport, will have to decide, nonetheless a preference might be paid in instalments until after the General Election.