Test heroes can catch Â£40,000 bonus ball

14 April 2012

England's triumphant cricketers are set to pocket win bonuses of more than £40,000 each from the run that has taken them to the verge of their third successive Test series victory this year.

Two separate jackpots of £180,000 have already been shared between the 16-man squad involved in the 3-0 triumph in the Caribbean in the spring and the 13 players who participated in the 3-0 clean sweep against New Zealand.

The same sum will be split between England's players if they draw or beat the West Indies in the Third Test at Old Trafford, starting on Thursday week, to wrap up their third series triumph in a golden four months.

Nine players - Michael Vaughan, Marcus Trescothick, Graham Thorpe, Andrew Flintoff, Geraint Jones, Ashley Giles, Stephen Harmison, Matthew Hoggard and Simon Jones - have featured in all three series.

If England name an unchanged team in the final two Tests, then those nine players would each be entitled to bonuses of £40,096, made up of £11,250 from the triumph in the Caribbean, £13,846 for crushing the Kiwis and £15,000 for beating the West Indies again.

Andrew Strauss and Mark Butcher, who played in two of the three series, will have earned just under £30,000 apiece.

The total bonus figure per series of £180,000, paid by the England and Wales Cricket Board, is on top of the central contracts and match fees for each Test and one-day international.

On tour, it is typical to split the pot between all the squad, regardless of whether they featured in the Tests or not. At home, smaller squads are named and it is usually only shared between those who played.

The formula for Test win bonuses is determined by who the opposition are, how many games there are in a series, and where it is played.

Wins over South Africa this winter and Australia next summer, which are both five-match series, will ensure even greater jackpots for England's increasingly successful players.

A series of cash cuts were forced on the ECB last year in the aftermath of the decision not to play a World Cup game in Zimbabwe. As a result the ECB restricted the number of 12-month central contracts to just eight players last September.

Apart from skipper Vaughan, they were James Anderson, Paul Collingwood, Nasser Hussain, Butcher, Flintoff, Giles and Trescothick.

Following the series victory in the Caribbean, the ECB awarded six-month contracts to Harmison, Hoggard, Thorpe and Jones.

Last year, England contracts were worth a basic £150,000 to the top band of players and £125,000 to second-tier players. Add to that additional tour fees, pooled sponsorship money, prize money and win bonuses, and players who feature consistently in both Test and one-dayers during the year will be able to earn around £400,000. This does not take into account fees for writing, advertising and equipment endorsements.

It is a fair guess, therefore, that leading performers like Vaughan and Flintoff will have made at least £1million from two years of high-profile cricket by October.

However, the jackpot for England's cricketers compares unfavourably with the bonuses on offer to their football and rugby counterparts.

Each England football squad player stood to make £200,000 from a pot of £4.4m if they won Euro 2004.

England's rugby squad shared a £1.25m bonus for winning the World Cup, worth around £40,000 per man.

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