Words of Wisedom? Or .... not?

The Hundred will make cricket visible, accessible, to young people.

Nathaniel Tresise.

The Cricketer Magazine.

Wednesday, 22 January 2020.

PTG 3005-14895.

Young people are a difficult bunch to engage. We live in a world of Love Island, Instagram, Fortnite and YouTube.  This is what cricket has to compete with in the battle for our attention, which is why the concept of The Hundred was introduced.   It presents cricket in a fresh, new way which will help to make the sport relevant to younger fans and attract a broader audience in general.

In light of this, I’ll come clean and say, aged 23, I believe in The Hundred – I think it will have a positive impact on cricket in England and Wales. The Hundred gives cricket an opportunity to step into the limelight and become a mainstream sport again.

As a starting point, ten matches will be shown live on a primetime BBC television slot, giving cricket free-to-air exposure which will enable it to reach the masses again.  To help people feel an affinity with the teams in The Hundred, they are named after cities – where young people and families either live or want to live.  The cities have taken over from the counties in popular culture thanks to football, music, universities or boundary changes.

The England and Wales Cricket Board’s (EWCB) existing ‘Blast’ Twenty20 series is a great tournament with a strong, loyal fan base, but does it cut through into mainstream media to engage new fans and grow the game? This is something I believe that The Hundred will do.  All the talk among The Hundred naysayers is that the EWCB wants to try to cull some counties through the new competition, but the quickest way of doing this has come from those same people.  

“Fixing” the Blast by splitting it into two divisions will have the exact same impact it has had on the County Championship.  All the money from TV, ticket sales and sponsors would be sucked into the First Division, leaving counties who can’t get promoted rotting in the lower half of the Second. 

Why go down the road of reducing a match to 100 balls?  Well, this idea came from research conducted by the ECB, which revealed that matches were going on too late for families – and that cricket was seen to some as too complicated.  There has been plenty of talk about the research, but are we seriously saying that these are not sensible arguments?

‘Blast' matches last year were going on till about 10 pm, which on a school holiday night is too late for children. These late finishes discourage parents from taking their families to matches or from allowing older children to be out that late on their own.  

As for cricket being too complicated, if you can’t see that you’ve probably spent too long in the game. Go and sit with someone who knows nothing about cricket in front of a scoreboard and ask them to explain it to you!  I do, however, think The Hundred can have a positive impact for traditional county fans.

For a long time, journalists, players and supporters have been rightly bemoaning the fact that County Championship cricket is being pushed to the edges of the summer.  This issue could be helped by The Hundred, with the EWCB’s Ashley Giles hinting at playing the two together. This is something that is simply not possible with the ‘Blast' due to the number of players that the tournament uses.

This is a massive opportunity for cricket to try to replicate some of the popularity that football generates through the winter. There is a gap in the calendar for this type of event; one which runs through large parts of the summer and is available to watch for free. This is a time to be looking at the bigger picture to see where cricket fits into modern British society rather than looking at our individual needs and preferences or trying to hold on to the past.