Money in sport

What occurs to me is that the whole sporting world is obsessed with money.

At a time when £250,000 a week cannot lure Wesley Schneider to Old Trafford, I am looking at making slight changes to our Chance to Shine programme for next year. It is all relative however and our extra 20k might be just as important to us.

However, I cannot help feeling that things have gone mad. Well we have known this for some time I hear you cry? Maybe, but do you realise that Wayne Rooney earms more in 2 weeks than the whole of our activity budget for one year to run the Lancashire Cricket Board and service our 130,000 cricket participants...and if you think that is mind boggling, then consider the fact that Man Utd spend more in one month on players than Lancashire CCC has done since the war.

The point is, we are still battling against the elements when it comes to developing cricket against our competitors. Don't get me wrong, I love the other sports (Rugby League in particular and my beloved Salford City Reds) but despite the highest profile cricket has enjoyed in my lifetime, we are still light years behind.

SKY and News International are currently in the news for the wrong reasons but you maybe interested to know that since they have injected money into cricket through TV subscription coverage, we have been able to incrase our activity by at least 600%. BBC or Channel 4 never gave us that opportunity!