Ashes fallout leaves Lord's desperately seeking sponsors

The man responsible for selling English cricket issued a bullish message for the future last week as he resigned with the game still desperately seeking sponsors for two competitions. Terry Blake, the commercial director of the England and Wales Cricket Board, said the game remained an attractive proposition despite the humiliation in the Ashes.

"There is some money around and I believe it is a matter of timing," he said. "While there may not be a lot to spend, businesses are looking at budgets now over the short term and making a tactical decision."

Cricket is short of sponsors for two of its three domestic one-day competitions: the National League and the new short game, 20Twenty. The ECB are frantically keen to recruit a string of sponsors for the latter, which they want to lure a fresh, young audience to the sport.

"It is not such a concern," said Blake. "The Six Nations rugby tournament announced its new sponsorship only a matter of days ago with the tournament due to start very soon. We're speaking to several people regularly."

But Blake knows that cricket, like rugby, might have to settle for less than it wants, which would have a knock-on effect on the finances of counties and the number of players they can employ.

Blake is largely credited with negotiating the extension to the TV deal for Test cricket, which starts in January. It is worth £147m over three years and is the envy of all other sports in Britain, barring possibly football. No sooner had he concluded it than the TV rights market plummeted.

Blake's departure was overshadowed by the crisis over Zimbabwe and whether England should play there in the World Cup. But the word from the ECB is that after 13 years he has had enough. Results in Australia might have been the final straw.

"Of course it's easier to go to people you want to back your game if you can say you've just won the Ashes," he said. "Sometimes, it isn't ideal speaking to people on the morning that England have failed to win and the news bulletins and papers are full of it.

"But three years ago England went to South Africa and were beaten and we had to secure sponsorships for three competitions then. Companies are waiting on budgets and it's a matter of timing for them."

Blake and his colleagues have spoken to several companies in connection with 20Twenty but the ECB are keen to have the right sort of sponsor. In the past, they have eventually managed to enlist firms, often in the financial sector. What they want is a FMCG (Fast Moving Consumer Goods) firm . If a soft-drinks giant came along you would probably have to turn a blind eye to avoid the gruesome sight of hands being bitten off at the ECB offices at Lord's.

Blake will be optimistic of getting his men, whoever they are, before he departs in the spring. There are after all more than 800 hours of televised cricket, more than a third of it on a terrestrial channel. But his successor will not be short of nettles to grasp. This is the last year of npower's backing of Tests and of NatWest's involvement with the triangular one-day international tournament.

It is an open secret that npower have not made quite as much of their exposure as they might. The NatWest competition has been a wonderful success, but their parent company, Royal Bank of Scotland, have just concluded a deal with the Six Nations.

In addition, while the £12m Vodafone sponsorship of the England team has two years to run, the resignation last week of the firm's chief executive, Sir Christopher Gent, may not augur well for its eventual renewal.

Such large deals are invariably based on mutual commercial benefits, but it helps if the men in the corridors of fiscal power are also cricket fans. Maybe Terry Blake was running out of them.