The first-class counties will be able to apply for substantial funding for new drainage systems and permanent floodlights as part of a five-year strategy for the game that the ECB will unveil in New Zealand on Monday. This has been inspired by the success of the £1.25 million soakaway at Lord's, which is estimated to have prevented about 15 days' play being lost over the past four seasons.

Giles Clarke and David Collier, the chairman and chief executive of the ECB, come from a background of administrative experience at smaller counties that have been less well protected from the elements than Test match grounds and are to allocate about £500,000 for every club that has not yet installed adequate drainage. This work would be undertaken by specialist companies under its auspices and, not surprisingly, the idea found favour with every county chairman at their meeting last week.

The value of MCC's investment was seen to good effect when play recommenced remarkably quickly during the Lord's Test against India last year after a downpour of the kind that in the past would have resulted in an abandonment for the day. Clarke and Collier are keen that all counties properly protect their squares and bowlers' run-ups in future so as to ensure spectators have value for their money.

Permanent floodlights exist at only a handful of grounds in the country - Derbyshire, Essex, Glamorgan, Hampshire, Sussex - and funding will be made available for this, too, not least as a result of the £40 million television deal for Test-match rights brokered by Clarke with ESPN last summer. Retractable lights are already being considered at Lord's, as they will be at the most troubled ground of all, Worcester, which has again been under water this winter. “Given our location, we cannot have any hope of planning permission for permanent lights,” Mark Newton, the Worcestershire chief executive, said. “But our new drainage is working well, although it has no impact on flooding.”

Test-match grounds will be given priority in terms of drainage systems -not least Trent Bridge, which was shown to be as inadequate in this regard as Lord's was an exemplar last summer -and it is understood funding from the ECB will also go on assistance for young cricketers to develop their game overseas and towards the recreational game as part of its five-year plan, which has been endorsed by KPMG, the accountancy firm. An MCC spokesman emphasised that it was not just “high-profile matches” which were benefiting at Lord's.

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