A major rift is looming in English cricket over negotiations for the sale of online and wireless rights, which could net the game £100m over the next 10 years.

A disagreement between the England and Wales Cricket Board and the First Class Forum, one of its constituent bodies, may be brought to a head this afternoon.

A meeting of the forum at Lord's will receive a report of a working party, set up under the chairmanship of Robert Griffiths QC to seek bidders for the rights. The report is expected to recommend proceeding to the next stage of negotiations.

The working party, commissioned by the First Class Forum and with members not only from the 18 first-class counties but the Professional Cricketers' Association, MCC, the ECB itself and Team England, is representative of all aspects of the English first-class game.

But senior members of the ECB are believed to be against the working party continuing negotiations on its behalf; it seems to believe that the tail is wagging the dog. Instead it wants to keep things in-house. The disagreement may cause a massive rift between the game's governing body and those who play it, and dis- rupt talks at least in the short term.

Already, after a week in which it has been announced that Australian cricketers will have annual earnings in excess of A$1m (£360,000) within three years, Griffiths has referred to the massive potential for top England players of the future to earn sums "beyond the wildest dreams of the present generation".

"Remuneration traditionally has been linked to ticket sales and broadcasting rights," he explained yesterday, "but online and wireless rights extend way beyond that. These are very exciting times."

The role of the working party has been to take the online rights and the secondary rights relating to mobile-phone technology and to find a bidder. Griffiths has succeeded in doing this, gaining "significant" interest from telecom companies, and he believes the working party is in a position to proceed to the next stage of negotiation, with revised bids and hopes of completing deals within the next two months.

One such part of the negotiations could be the sale of the online rights to Channel 4, which has already had its television contract extended by two years and is believed to own some part of the rights already, through a negotiating oversight by the ECB when the original deal was drawn up. Such a sale, though, would require all the constituent groups to come together in agreement.

Cricket is uniquely placed among sports for online development, with its deep statistical and historical base, the astounding global interest especially in Asia, and the massive potential in, for example, the development of internet betting.

"It is incredible that what is essentially a Victorian game can have such a huge potential. We cannot afford not to take advantage of this," Griffiths said.