Cricket officials are braced for a potential public funding cut of up to a third today when Sport England announces the winners and losers in a £480 million carve-up for grassroots sport over the next four years. The ECB fears it will lose out in the financial settlement for 46 sports for the 2009-13 period because of a reclassification of the funding criteria to meet Government participation targets before the London Olympics in 2012.

Cricket sources say the sport needs £53 million “just to stand still” and to safeguard investment in grassroots programmes, including the Chance to Shine campaign to bring competitive cricket back to state schools. Under the last spending round to March 2009, the ECB says it received more than £50 million and any less would represent a damaging cut.

A big reduction could threaten its investment in Chance to Shine, a project launched with the backing of Gordon Brown and enthusiastically supported by Andy Burnham, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. The project is funded by the Cricket Foundation, an ECB-supported charity that raises money from the private sector, with up to £25 million of matched money from the Exchequer over a decade. It is understood that £10 million of that Exchequer funding over the next four years will be rolled up in cricket’s overall package from Sport England. Cricket officials will see this as an effective loss of £10 million from their core public funding, which is mostly spent on facilities around the country.

Burnham may be able to secure extra money for the project. The ECB, however, wants to avoid falling into financial limbo. It fears a repeat of the Medal Hopes scheme, which failed to raise private sponsorship money for Olympic athletes and left some sports facing deep cuts to bridge a £50 million shortfall in UK Sport’s budget.

Cricket and other non-Olympic sports such as rugby are concerned that the 2012 Olympics have drawn Lottery funding away from their community projects. Sport England, the funding agency for community sport, denies that its grants are decided by Olympic involvement, although it will be funding some Olympic and Paralympic disciplines for the first time.

Sources also say the ECB’s calculations are flawed under the new grant criteria and that cricket received only £37 million last time in comparable national funding — excluding regional grants and coaching awards.

After a restructure, Sport England will only distribute public money to national governing bodies on the basis of increased and sustained participation levels for adults, with sports judged against data collected annually.Sport England is expected to deliver half the Government’s target to increase the number of people active in sport by one million by 2012.