The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is to advance each of the 18 first-class counties about £200,000 to help them through the crisis created by what is set to be the wettest cricket season on record. About 40cm (nearly 16 inches) of rain has fallen since April, second only to the 44.9cm that fell from May 1 to August 31 in 1903.

The ECB is able to make the unprecedented payments thanks to financial reserves built up through its controversial but lucrative broadcasting deal with Sky, Channel 5 and the BBC negotiated in 2004 and worth £220m over four years. In three years the board has amassed reserves well in excess of £10m.

The payments, due next month, are an advance on the annual payments made by the board to the counties at the end of the year, but the timing will ease the severe cashflow problems of the worst-hit counties.

Worcestershire, who may not play at their New Road headquarters again this season because the playing area has been under water for weeks, estimate that the cost of the floods to them already stands at nearly £500,000. Gloucester-shire, who suffered the first abandonment of the popular Cheltenham festival in 135 years, plus several washed-out days at the County Ground in Bristol, reckon they have lost more than £200,000.

Glamorgan have also suffered badly. Their annual visit to Abergavenny has been devastated by rain, and when they staged a match at Swansea in May it was all over in 1½ days; they were docked eight points for producing a pitch with “excessive turn”.

Although insurance schemes will soften some blows, most counties have suffered significant losses from gate receipts from washed-out one-day matches, especially in the popular Twenty20 Cup. Almost one-third of all Twenty20 group games – 21 out of 72 – have been either washed out or produced no result. Last year the figure was two. About half the matches in the Liverpool Victoria County Championship have also finished inconclusively.

Clubs can use the £200,000 as they see fit, but there is hope that over the winter some will seek to improve drainage systems that proved inadequate in the face of such heavy downpours. The standard has been set by Lord’s, which spent £1m on new drainage in 2002-3. Play was able to restart on the second day of the first Test with India nine days ago within hours of a deluge.

Worcestershire have already received a special payment from the board and may be in line for further support as they consider whether to try to fulfil their fixtures at New Road in September – they have already relocated all their August games – or dig up the outfield and begin sowing grass for next season.

“The ECB’s attitude has been fantastic,” Mark Newton, Worcestershire’s chief executive, said. “They have already given us £75,000. We haven’t asked the question, but at some stage there may be further discussions [about more money].” Newton says that if the club endures another such wet summer soon, it might have to consider leaving New Road, which routinely floods in the winter months, but at the moment the county is adamant that it is staying put.

“If this is a once-in-70-years event, we can live with that, but if it happens again in the next five years, we may have to ask ourselves what the future is here,” he said. “But at the moment we are 100% committed to New Road, which was recently voted among the top 10 grounds in the world to visit. We have planning permission for redevelopment that will raise all the buildings and stands, which are the costliest things to repair.

“There will be voids under them to allow for floodwater. We are also looking at raising certain parts of the outfield. Our biggest concern is the impact [of the lost cricket] on future members and sponsors, who may review what they are getting for their money.” Warwickshire, Somerset and Yorkshire have agreed to stage matches on their grounds that were due to be played at New Road.

David Harker, Durham’s chief executive, is also sympathetic to the plight of Worcestershire, who were last able to stage a first XI match at New Road on June 13: “I would not be averse to Worcestershire being helped out financially, although I would like to see a long-term plan [for New Road] rather than just handing over some cash every time the ground floods. But we all want to see cricket there. It is a special place.” However, Worcestershire’s plea to rearrange their recent championship match with Kent, once it became clear that the match could not be played, angered some. Initially the ECB ruled that the game could be rescheduled but backed down after several clubs protested that rained-off matches were not normally replayed. These clubs also rejected the ECB’s suggestion that Kent be awarded extra points because they were an innocent party. Kent are considering legal action.

Various money-raising schemes have been mooted. Richard Bevan, the chief executive of the Professional Cricketers’ Association, says the PCA had offered to stage a PCA Masters XI match next season to raise funds to help the counties worst hit by the floods.

Tom Richardson, Gloucester-shire’s chief executive, wants to play more county Twenty20 matches in 2008 in an effort to recoup this year’s losses. “I would double the number of [Twenty20] fixtures, playing eight at home and eight away over a longer period,” he said.

“There is a correlation between developing stadiums and increasing audiences by putting on competitions that will fill them. If Twenty20 cricket was extended, we could start earlier in April and keep playing until late September or early October, when the weather is often good. We would all like greater subsidies [from the ECB] but I would rather some [ECB] reserves were made available for ground redevelopments.”

Derek Brewer, Nottingham-shire’s chief executive, says the club would consider installing a new drainage system at Trent Bridge, where play in the second Test was unable to begin on Friday until 3pm, even though no rain had fallen since the previous day.

The club is due to build a new stand on the Bridgford Road side of the ground this winter. Parts of the outfield will be dug up as part of the project, and Brewer said that thought would be given to extending the work to improve drainage. “In the light of what has happened here, we will be reviewing what can best be done about the drainage, but it has to be remembered that we are situated very close to the River Trent,” he said. “The water table here is very high.”

The West Indies Test match at Leeds in late May lost the third day to rain, but Stewart Regan, Yorkshire’s chief executive, said a better drainage system would not have helped. “We lost the whole of the Sunday because it rained continuously, not because of the drainage system,” he said. “It [new drainage] would be a matter of balancing the cost with our other priorities, but we were very impressed with what we saw at Lord’s.”

Paradoxically, Lord’s has staged the only Tests to be drawn this summer, thanks to bad weather on the fifth days against West Indies and India.

Like Lord’s, Old Trafford has invested in an efficient sand-based outfield. It could not, however, prevent Lancashire suffering the abandonment of Twenty20 fixtures against Derbyshire and Leicestershire, which, the club estimated, would have cost them crowds of 11,000 and 12,000. “We have lost 1,300 overs in all in championship cricket thus far this season compared with 1,100 for the whole of last summer,” a spokesman said.

Philip Eden, a vice-president of the Royal Meteorological Society and avid cricket fan, believes that 2007 may finish as the wettest English season on record. He has devised a weather index for the months from May to August each year. Apart from rainfall, it takes account of temperature and sunshine. According to this index, 1954 comes out worst of all.

The glorious early weeks of the 2007 season are now but a distant memory. Then, batsmen basked in sublime batting conditions, racking up huge scores – 14 of the season’s 15 double-centuries had been made by the first week in June – and grounds-men sat outside their sheds, contemplating a summer of sunbathing. They have scarcely stopped working since.