IT WOULD have been surprising after all that happened last summer had it not been so, but the threat to public funding for cricket had the ECB’s five-year plan not satisfied the highly political guidelines laid down by Sport England was removed yesterday. A significant investment in grassroots and community cricket was confirmed when the quango announced that £10.7 million in lottery funding will be available over the next three years.

David Collier, the chief executive of the ECB, and Hugh Morris, his deputy, can be congratulated for ensuring that the Building Partnerships business plan that was launched at the start of last season ticked all the necessary boxes. The award is effective from April this year and will run to the end of March 2009.

Roger Draper, the chief executive of Sport England, said that it recognised the substantial progress made by the ECB in modernising its management structures and its vision for grassroots development. “Cricket is on a huge high following last summer’s Ashes successes and has a fantastic opportunity to capitalise on unprecedented levels of public popularity,” Draper said. “The £10.7 million we are investing over the next three years will contribute towards achieving the goals we share with the ECB of getting more people from all backgrounds involved at all levels.”

Collier recognises the duration of the agreement as a step forward. “It has been the ECB’s desire to move towards a multi-year commitment of public funding, in order that our clubs and county boards can provide sustainable programmes,” he said.

A further £4.75 million has been committed by Sport England to a Community Club Development Programme, which invests in local cricket club development projects. Lottery money for club projects has more or less dried up, but Sport England is also giving £2 million to the Cricket Foundation’s “Chance to Shine” initiative, which has made progress towards reinvigorating cricket in state schools.

In all, more than £103 million of lottery funds has been invested in cricket since 1994, supporting more than 3,000 projects, ranging from high-profile facilities such as the ECB National Cricket Centre in Loughborough to awards to small clubs.

None of those small clubs could run first, second and often third and fourth teams without umpires and scorers, but the organisation that represents those pillars of the grassroots game, the Association of Cricket Umpires and Scorers (ACU&S), remains in a state of crisis that may end in amalgamation with the ECB’s recreational arm. This week, Mike Charman, the official scorer at Sussex, resigned all his roles with the ACU&S, notably as deputy general secretary, after a meeting of 25 members of the organisation’s general council.

Charman alleges financial impropriety, a charge denied yesterday by Tony Bastable, the media officer of the ACU&S, who said: “Someone arranged for the Surrey Police fraud squad to investigate the association’s financial problems. Just like Colin Pearson’s ACU&S committee of inquiry, they found no evidence of criminal wrongdoing.”

Paul Joy, the chairman of last weekend’s meeting, said that he regretted the ECB’s decision not to continue to support the training activities of the organisation with its £25,000 grant. “The majority of members would join an ECB officials’ organisation with great reluctance,” he said.

The ECB proposes a new organisation for umpires and scorers under its auspices, offering “viable long-term financial stability but also an integrated structure covering the progression of officials from school and club cricket to first-class cricket”.