NEIL DAVIDSON, Leicestershire’s chairman, made an outspoken attack last night on the ECB’s financial distribution of big events, alleging a cosy alliance between the leading clubs. Davidson is incensed at the miserable reward to the county from their fourth appearance out of four in the Twenty20 finals day last Saturday and a second triumph in the final.

Leicestershire, he says, will make no more than £2,000 from a finals day at Trent Bridge that he estimates will net the beaten finalists, Nottinghamshire, £300,000.

Nottinghamshire’s chief executive, Derek Brewer, countered last night that the county’s profit from the final is “unlikely to be substantively more than the £40,000 we made from staging the finals in 2003”. They pay a six-figure staging fee to the ECB for equal distribution among the other 17 counties, are entitled to keep the profit from the sale of more than 15,000 tickets at £25 a head, a total of £375,000, but had large expenditure on the day.

Even if Davidson is exaggerating, the difference in the profits emphasises afresh the stark difference in earning power between Test match grounds and those with smaller capacities that never get a chance to make this sort of money from a day’s work.

“Yes, we won £42,000 in prize-money as winners,” Davidson said, “but under established conventions, that goes to the players. We had to fight to get £14,000 for taking part in the semi-finals at Trent Bridge when it was originally indicated we would get £7,000. We had to pay Trent Bridge for hospitality for our sponsors and had other expenses on the day, such as hotels, so we estimate that we will come out of it with about £2,000 at best.”

Leicestershire had disappointing returns from their home games in the earlier rounds of this year’s Twenty20, which, according to ECB figures, attracted an average crowd of no more than 2,000. Overall, the ECB says that attendances were up by “at least 5 per cent”.

Davidson claims, however, “a malaise within the ECB that stretches far beyond Twenty20 finals day arrangements”.

“The ECB is owned by the counties and MCC,” he added. “Collectively, we own the rights to stage international cricket and major matches. The annual fee payment is effectively a shareholders’ dividend payment from the total net income generated. There is a major distortion to this dividend distribution system because of the arrangements which have been negotiated on our collective behalf between the ECB and those counties who host major matches.”

The larger counties naturally generate more local income than smaller counties but as most of them are hosts of big matches, this differential is compounded by these big-match hosting agreements. This, he added, is having a “knock-on” effect on players’ wages and the ability of smaller counties to recruit and retain England-qualified players.

“The corporate cynic might speculate about the make-up of the new ECB board and the decision to award Cardiff an Ashes Test match in 2009 with a ground still to be developed and no experience of hosting a Test match,” he said, adding that of the six first-class representatives on the management board, two have connections with Surrey, two with Glamorgan, one with Warwickshire and only one from a county who do not host international cricket, Giles Clark, of Somerset. But the ground at Taunton is to be redeveloped with the possible staging of international cricket in mind.

“A proliferation of major match grounds that have to be maintained and continually upgraded is not what we collectively need,” Davidson said. “What is needed is a distribution system which recognises the importance of major match grounds and is fair to them but equally gives the rest of us a reasonable return on the investment we are effectively and collectively making in those grounds.”