THE first-class counties who did not stage lucrative Test matches against Australia last year are to receive bonus payments from the ECB. These will amount to £42,000 each, other than Durham, Gloucestershire, Hampshire and Yorkshire, who receive £30,000 as they hosted limited-overs internationals. The sums will help to alleviate the substantial losses incurred by several counties.

Giles Clarke and Paul Russell, the chairmen of Somerset and Glamorgan, were to the fore as ECB directors in negotiating the bonuses, which might be repeated in years to come if Test match receipts are as substantial as they were last year. This extra funding will be found out of a sum of £540,000 that the ICC expects to release to the ECB this weekend.

The counties that staged Test matches in 2005 were in agreement that this money should be given to the so-called smaller counties. Several returned record losses in spite of receiving £1.3 million income each from the ECB and lobbied — in one or two cases pleaded — for additional support. John Elliott, the chairman of Worcestershire, requested £50,000 last autumn.

“We made a profit of £50,000 last year, but spent £60,000 on our pavilion in the winter. I suggested that we should be given £50,000 and Carl Openshaw, the chairman of Kent, wanted £200,000, but to us £42,000 is a real bonus. We are all playing on grounds that are more than 100 years old and the infrastructure is collapsing,” he said.

Tom Sears, the chief executive of Derbyshire, whose county recorded a loss of £215,000, said: “Any additional revenue is welcome. I am confident we shall be close to breaking even this year and it is a help that we are playing the Sri Lankans this weekend — although having that fixture at the end of April is not the same as playing the Australians, which we were not allocated last year.”

A lengthy paper submitted by Openshaw, whose county, Kent, reported a record loss of £309,998, was rejected by the representatives of the Test match counties. He had reported to the ECB that the average sum spent on players’ salaries for 2004 by four Test match counties, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire, Surrey and Warwickshire, in addition to Hampshire, who are reliant on funding from Rod Bransgrove, their chairman, was £1,495,000. The remaining 13 counties spent £1,037,000 each.

Openshaw, who sought greater funding for non-Test counties than those with Test grounds, cited that Surrey, Warwickshire and Nottinghamshire generated £1,905,000, £1,346,000 and £1,142,000 from international cricket respectively. Nottinghamshire, he said, became county champions with eight players nurtured and capped by other counties.

Bransgrove, who has spent £3,250,000 of his own money developing the Rose Bowl, which has yet to acquire category A status, said: “The ECB should get its distribution policy right and not have a system of bonuses.”