A benefit season is a method of financially rewarding professional cricketers that is used by English county cricket teams to compensate long serving players. The system originated in the 19th century to help out professional cricketers who were paid low wages and generally could not play professional cricket much beyond the age of forty. Early "benefits" typically comprised the gate receipts of a designated match. Nowadays, a benefit season comprises a sequence of events such as dinners and auctions of memorabilia over the course of the summer cricket season or the whole year in which the relevant cricket season falls. In almost all cases only one player from a club is given a benefit in each season in order to avoid two or more players competing to attract money from the same people. Unt