Hundred: Is it all over for the over?

Strategic timeouts to be feature of the Hundred.
Matt Hughes and Elizabeth Ammon.

The Times.

Friday, 15 February 2019.

PTG 2727-13628.

Timeouts are set to be used in English cricket for the first time next year after being included in the Playing Conditions for the new Hundred competition which have been unanimously approved by the board of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).  Some matches in last year’s Indian Premier League (IPL), which were elongated by strategic timeouts, ran to almost four hours (PTG 2413-12219, 5 April 2018).

It is understood that strategic timeouts, which can be called by the fielding captain wanting a tactical consultation with his players and coach at any point between the 26th and 75th delivery of the opposition’s innings, will be a feature of the new tournament along with a countdown clock detailing how much time is left in the innings, with runs being given to the opposition if bowling teams miss the cut-off.

Timeouts have been used in the IPL since 2009, but have not previously featured in any other form of cricket other than trial matches for the Hundred, which took place at Trent Bridge and Loughborough last September. The ECB board is understood to have approved a two-and-a-half minute timeout for the Hundred when it launches in 2020, a decision which has to be ratified by the 18 counties, whose willingness to sign off the playing conditions is regarded as a formality.

A number of other innovations that were used in the trials, which featured eight matches involving 35 players, have not been included in the Playing Conditions for the Hundred, a controversial new tournament involving eight yet-to-be-revealed teams that the ECB have designed in an attempt to broaden cricket’s audience.

The experiment with substitute fielders has been abandoned so all matches will be 11-a-side; a proposal to give the batting side a “Free Hit” after each wide was rejected (PTG 2581-12991, 23 September 2018); and the power-play fielding restrictions that are a feature of Twenty20 and one-day cricket will be included, being mandatory for the first 25 balls of each innings.

A decision has yet to be taken by the ECB board on another radical proposal, to end the practice of allowing batsmen to cross when one is out caught, thus ensuring the incoming batsmen is not immediately on strike. The matches will essentially see an end to the traditional six-ball overs and consist of passages of ten deliveries from each end of the ground, which can be bowled by either one bowler delivering all ten or two bowlers delivering five each.

Despite the anticipated agreement over the Playing Conditions there remains tension between the ECB and the counties over some aspects of the competition, particularly the ten clubs who have not been chosen as host venues. There is concern among those smaller counties that being one of the eight venues will give the bigger clubs an advantage in terms of player recruitment and lead to conflicts of interest, particularly as the ECB has backed down from demanding that the hosts appoint independent coaches and directors of cricket.

The Professional Cricketers Association have also raised concerns that players from the other ten counties will be at a disadvantage when it comes to the player draft which is due to take place in October, two weeks after the end of the 2019 domestic season (PTG 2714-13566, 3 February 2019).

As a result a planned announcement of the names of the eight teams who will contest the Hundred has been postponed amid disagreements over the amount of cross-over between the teams and counties based at the same venue. The ECB had originally wanted to avoid any geographic element in the team names, but has had a change of heart after conducting market research which revealed that team branding based on cities has a greater resonance with the public.

In a further complication the provisional start date of next year’s tournament is understood to have been brought forward. Originally the ECB had planned to launch the tournament on the last weekend of July, but this clashes with the start of the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. The intention is that the inaugural Hundred match is shown on the BBC as well as pay-walled Sky and, in order to avoid a schedule clash, it is now proposed that the start of the Hundred is brought forward by around a week even though this would be before the start of the UK state school holidays.