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THE power struggle between the England and Wales Cricket Board and the owners of Test match grounds came nearer to resolution yesterday when a spokesman for the ECB promised a meeting between the two sides. He was reacting to a strongly worded letter from MCC secretary Roger Knight to Tim Lamb, chief executive of the ECB, in Knight's capacity as secretary of the Test Match Grounds Consortium.

The disagreement about how the profits from Tests should be distributed was inevitable once the Test grounds got together, as revealed in The Daily Telegraph last September, under the chairmanship of Robert Griffiths, QC.

Until their demand that the board should negotiate joint terms for the staging of big matches, a standard rate of 7.5 per cent of the face value of Test tickets (and five per cent of tickets to MCC for cup finals at Lord's) was all Test grounds received back from the board. The overall profit from the rest of the gate receipts and from television, sponsorship and perimeter advertising has always been evenly distributed between the 18 first-class counties.

Threats have been made by the board and the consortium to stage internationals on smaller county grounds but the issues at stake are too important to both sides for a compromise not to be agreed.

It is estimated the counties would lose 9 million pounds in an average season if overall attendance were to be reduced by 80,000, as it would be if matches were played instead at the next largest county grounds.

ECB officials recognise the need to improve facilities for big matches but say they also have a responsibility to less wealthy counties.

But there is frustration on the part of the consortium that the board have been dragging their heels on the question of how much money should go back to the main Test stadiums.