The payment of £2m, due in 2022, to certain unnamed individuals at the ECB under a Long Term Incentive Plan has finally been picked up in the press.  See this from the  Guardian . The Guardian has the story as an "Ali Martin exclusive", not so fast Mr Martin, SideOn first covered the payments in  2018 .  I'm not accusing the Guardian of nicking my stuff but claiming something as an exclusive which has been available in the ECB's accounts for three years seems a little rich.  Still it's good the whole business is getting some scrutiny.   If the Guardian was looking for another exclusive they could do worse than this  post , which showed ECB spending on staff salaries increased in the year to 31 January 2021 by more than £6m to over £43m.  And I wonder whether there's a bit more to it than that.   Note 3 to the accounts which covers payroll costs includes the following, rather ambiguous, narrative explanation of why staff costs have increased by so much.  "

  This is a post on the ECB's financial statements for the period ended 31 January 2021 .   Posts on previous accounts are here:  2017   2018 2019 2020 Summary In 2021 the ECB's income was £207m against total costs of £223m leaving it with a deficit of £16m. At 31 January 2021 accumulated reserves were just £2m.  As the accounting period  coincided with the worst of the coronavirus crisis that's not a bad result.  Of course the talk (some of it from within the ECB) of cricket losing £100m + was always exaggerated, given reduced revenues would come with reduced costs and that cricket's financial position is underpinned by TV revenues.  But there was no guarantee there would be games to televise and the ECB did well to keep the show on the road.  The remainder of this post, tries to get underneath the headline figures, compares actual to expected outcomes and asks the questions: who benefits from English cricket's weird structure? As with all previous posts on the ECB