England cricket is heading for a nervous new year after Vodafone announced that its association with the national team will end when its contract expires in 13 months' time. Deals with npower, the sponsor of Test cricket, and NatWest, which supports the one-day international programme, will end after next season and backers must also be found for the much-hyped English Premier League (EPL) in time for its launch in 2010.

John Perera, the ECB commercial director, admitted that forthcoming negotiations will be tough as the credit crunch moves towards recession, but expressed confidence that npower and NatWest, whose association with the game began as far back as 1981 when it took over the Gillette Cup, will recommit. Talks with the companies have begun as the board tries to avoid losing more partners during the economic downturn.

“Cricket and most other major sports have had a very successful run in marketing and commercial terms in the last five or ten years,” Perera said. “This is the first downturn in the period. It is going to be more difficult than the past, but cricket audience and media exposure are excellent and it will be down to the way we handle the market place. Renewals and extensions are easier to secure than new partners.”

The Vodafone deal is worth £4million per year to the board, while the three-year contract agreed with npower for the 2007-09 period will generate a total of about £15million. NatWest, which also supports the domestic Pro40 competition, agreed to pay an estimated £10million for an overall package including 50-over and Twenty20 internationals during the last round of discussions, which covered the four seasons from 2006.

English cricket, from team planning downwards, tends to work in four-year cycles around home Ashes series, but the ECB may respond to the present slump by offering two-year deals to sponsors with the option of extensions. Giles Clarke, the chairman, whose background is in business, has also mooted the idea of offering split deals for the England Test and one-day sides as an alternative way of dropping the asking price.

Sponsorship accounts for roughly 14 per cent of the ECB revenue, with almost 80 per cent of it from broadcasting rights. Total income in 2007 stood at £97million. Last summer the board secured a television deal worth more than £300million with Sky Sports and Five for 2010-13, while a five-year contract with ESPN Star Sports is in place to screen England home international and domestic games in the sub-continent and Middle East.

“Sponsorship is significant, but not absolutely crucial, to our ongoing running,” Perera said. “Having said that, we are disappointed that the association with Vodafone will end. We will miss them.”

The telecommunications firm will also be ending sponsorship of football's Champions League, but remains committed, for now, to Lewis Hamilton and his McLaren Mercedes team.

Links with Vodafone date to 1998 when Lord MacLaurin of Knebworth was chairman of the company and the ECB. Sir Christopher Gent, the Vodafone chief executive at the time, was also a cricket supporter who was educated within shouting distance of the Oval. The business is now a multinational concern, with a chief executive, in Vittorio Coloa, from Italy.

John Taylor, the chairman of Sports Impact, who has negotiated sponsorship deals with the ECB for Tetley's and npower, believes that England cricket remains an attractive opportunity. “I have no doubt that the ECB will find somebody to replace Vodafone, the question is at what price?” he said. “The market is difficult at the moment. The top deals are still being done and smaller deals are still there, but the middle is being squeezed.

“It would be unfortunate if they were having to look for three sponsors at the same time. But even in that scenario, I think they have such strong properties that they would find somebody to take them up because cricket has good TV and media presence. Maybe areas like banks and insurance companies which have had links to cricket in the past may not be as conducive at the moment.”

Perera confirmed that the ECB has an option to link with Allen Stanford, the Texan financier for the EPL, which is England's version of the Indian Premier League. Progress with any party, however, must wait until the format of the competition is agreed. A working party is still discussing options.