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| | Is Elton John the saviour of county cricket? | Cricket | Guardian Unlimited Sport |
 | | Log on to Kent County Cricket Club's website and the first thing you see is a picture of Elton John, dressed in cricket whites, and an advertisement for his A Night Under the Stars concert in June at the St Lawrence Ground. |
 | | While even modest Premiership clubs boast six-figure shirt sponsorship deals, Surrey, one of the biggest counties, are trumpeting a tie-up with Thrifty Car Rentals: in return for hospitality and ground advertising, 13 players and coaches will get the use of top-of-the-range Ford Mondeo Titanium X cars. |
 | | County cricket's fragile finances are increasingly based on innovative thinking, often only tenuously linked to the sport itself, trying to create commercial opportunities 365 days a year, rather than on only 40 or 50 cricket days. |
| sport.guardian.co.uk /cricket/story/0,,1766818,00.html (864 words) |
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