The Hundred - an Independent view

Jonathan Liew Indepenent 02/02/19

he ends his article with:

...Each of the three formats has produced a classic game in recent weeks, from England’s fearless run chase in Barbados, to Ireland’s stunning final-ball win over Holland in Oman, to Sri Lanka’s remarkable one-wicket triumph over South Africa in Port Elizabeth. Many times of late, the death knell has been sounded for international cricket, and occasionally even the sport as a whole. But in a way, cricket has never felt richer or more varied.

At which point: enter the England and Wales Cricket Board, who for some reason have decided that a fourth format is necessary. It’s important to note that for all its bells and whistles, The Hundred will not be radically different from T20 in a sporting sense. A par score may well be 160 rather than 200, and the shift from six-ball overs to ten-ball ends will introduce certain tactical subtleties, but these are fairly minor distinctions in the scale of things. For the whole point of The Hundred is not to create a new sporting product, but to repackage and force-feed us an existing one.

It takes a certain turkey-headed stupidity to look at the remarkable success of T20 - not only the most lucrative format in the history of cricket but also the lifeblood of the evening grassroots game - and think: “Nah, not for us”. But this is where the ECB currently has us: a marketing wheeze, a cynical rebranding exercise, cricket in clown shoes and a blue wig and presented by John Bishop. Its success would euthanise the domestic game and its failure would impoverish it.

Often the debate over The Hundred is portrayed as one of modernisers versus traditionalists. But this has always been a dishonest framing. As events from Grenada to Bangalore to Hamilton have proven, the ECB’s new format displays a disdain not just for cricket’s past, but its present and future as well. And quite sensibly, the rest of the world seems to have concluded that it rather likes what it already has.

Tom Harrison Speaks 100

The Cricketer 21/12/18

The ECB’s chief executive Tom Harrison has defended their new format known as The Hundred in an interview with Sky Sports.

The Hundred was announced by the ECB back in April 2018 and has been met with fierce criticism from fans of county cricket ever since.

“This is about the requirement for us to remain relevant as a game," said Harrison.

"We have got fantastic county competitions in this country, we've got a thriving international game, but what the ECB and I have to do is ensure we're keeping an eye on the future and making sure we are doing as much as we can to make the game as open, available and accessible as it can be to wider audiences.

"There is plenty of evidence out there to suggest that while we have been doing very well with our county competitions there is much more we can do to get those wider audiences in the game, which are going to be important in the future for this game to thrive throughout this country.

"That's where the concept of the new tournament was born and it's where as a bold and brave plan for the game, is where the playing conditions for The Hundred started.

“The evidence suggests we need to be doing things differently from T20 if we are going to expect a different result from the public response. It's a really exciting time; I think fans are going to love it. It's high-pressure, high-calibre cricket.”

Hasn't the T20 Blast been growing year on year? It certainly has in Notts!

There's no "evidence" that the ECB has tried to grow the existing "fantastic county competitions", preferring to hide it behind the Sky pay-wall and to just cash the cheques.

Isn't the existing T20 competition exciting, high pressure and high calibre then, Mr Harrison?

If the audience isn't that familiar with cricket, how would they recognise exciting, high pressure and high calibre cricket, even if it jumped up a landed in the stand in front of them? 

There is evidence however, that.... some sections of crowds are more content with flossing and Mexican waving at critical, exciting, exhilarating and tense later stages of excellent games of traditional T20 cricket, than watching it happen and being part of it.