The Hundred, Just Another Reason to Arrrgghh!

 

With 100 days until the launch of the divisive Hundred Competition; another controversial detail has been fed to the media:

Dismissals to be renamed 'outs' for The Hundred.
Nick Hoult.
London Daily Telegraph.
Tuesday, 13 April 2021.
PTG 3477-17224.

Get ready for "outs" instead of wickets when the England and Wales Cricket Board's (EWCB) new Hundred format launches in July. In an effort to make the sport more accessible to new supporters, EWCB chiefs are ready to overhaul some of the game's historic terminology.

It is understood that one of the biggest changes will be that wickets will be described as "outs", while batsmen will be called batters in the men’s form of the game. The introduction of "outs" is likely to be the most controversial for traditionalists, many of whom are already sceptical about the introduction of the Hundred, which starts in 100 days time on July 21 when the women’s competition kicks off at the Oval.

Scrapping the term "wickets" promises to completely overhaul the way in which scoring is described. It means a team could be described as having 75 runs off 32 balls for two outs instead of 75 for two wickets off 32 balls. A bowler can still be said to have taken a wicket but could be described as claiming 15 "outs" off 120 balls in the competition so far.

It is one of a number of ideas being considered by the EWCB and broadcasters and although nothing has been finalised. market research has revealed that one of the biggest barriers for new supporters is the complexity of cricket’s terminology.

"Outs" is used in baseball but is also a cricket word so it is viewed as being acceptable as change. The EWCB will not be inventing a new vocabulary for the competition but want to find the easiest and simplest way to describe this new format to people who may be encountering cricket for the first time.

"Runs", "balls" and "outs" will be the currency of the competition and while no phrases will be banned, commentators will be encouraged to use the new terminology. Batsmen will be made gender neutral — the continuation of a trend which is already under way in the game — but other terms like third man could go the same way.

The competition is intended to establish an identity which is distinct from other EWCB tournaments. Organisers are understood to be treating its launch as a blank piece of paper to redraw cricket as we know it now. Scorecards will also have to be altered and updated to reflect a 100-ball competition. There will be a change of ends after 10 balls and bowlers can deliver either five or 10 balls consecutively. A countdown clock from 100 to zero balls has been suggested, too.

The ideas have been extensively tested with focus groups and met with favourable responses, encouraging the EWCB to be brave, bold and go for change, even though such moves are likely to infuriate the game's traditional domestic fanbase.

A spokesperson for The Hundred said it "is designed to make cricket accessible to everyone, and research shows that the language of the game can sometimes be a barrier. Along with our broadcast partners, we want the Hundred to open cricket up to more people, as well as entertaining existing fans, so we’re discussing the clearest ways of explaining the game, but nothing’s been finalised”.

In a recent survey of almost 800 Telegraph readers, only one in four said they would attend a Hundred match, while seven of 18 county chief executives said they feared the competition would have a negative impact on county cricket. Social media reaction was overwhelmingly negative when news that ‘outs’ could replace ’wickets’ in the new competition.

By changing wickets to outs it shows there is no room for compromise when it comes to the Hundred. The competition has met with such hostility from the majority of the sport’s traditional core that the EWCB has realised it may as well go for broke, rip up standard conventions and not worry too much about the fall-out.

Rebranding 'wickets' for The Hundred? Thanks, but I'm out…
Simon Heffer.
London Daily Telegraph.
Tuesday, 13 April 2021.
PTG 3477-17225.

Since The Hundred isn’t by most people’s definition actually cricket, then it doesn’t really matter what the features of this mindless slogathon are called. The term ‘wickets’, which the England and Wales Cricket Board (EWCB) seems to think causes grave intellectual difficulty to large tranches of the non-cricket going public that they are hoping to attract, is to be replaced by ‘outs’ (PTG 3477-17224 above). I wonder how much of the EWCB’s money was spent on that bit of re-branding expertise?

But you do not entice people into a cricket ground and make them part with handsome amounts of money just because you change the name of an important aspect of the game. To those who nothing about cricket - an important constituency that the EWCB wishes to attract - what a dismissal is called makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.


However, it does make a difference to those who do know about cricket, and whose alienation from the sport this confected form of the game is already near to achieving. Their anger and sense of estrangement will simply grow, and it and other such nonsense will simply help ensure they are turned off the Hundred for good, and start to feel less attracted to cricket generally.

Batsmen are to become ‘gender neutral’ and thus called ‘batters’, a repellent term that has seeped into the language of some of the more uncouth television and radio commentators and which always reminds more civilised people of a fish and chip shop, or the mixture with which to make Yorkshire pudding. The term ‘balls’ has not yet been scrapped which, given the absurdity of this format and the attitude the EWCB is taking towards those they hope will watch it, is probably just as well.

Only last week surveys of county chief executives and of the cricketing public revealed massive indifference to this new format but, still worse, that those most closely involved with the game as local administrators or spectators feel it will end up doing harm to cricket – especially to the County Championship and the ultimate format for which it creates players, Test matches (PTG 3472-17201, 8 April 2021).

On one level, what is being proposed for the Hundred now may appear to be only a minor matter of terminology, but it is in fact another severance of this new type of game from everything else. It is all part of the creation of a whole new activity that just happens to have people playing it who at other times earn their livings being cricketers.

Before too long, the Hundred will become just another money-making activity that happens at cricket grounds to keep the infrastructure functioning, such as selling beer or hospitality boxes, or using cricket grounds to host rock concerts or car boot sales.

But the real damage that is done is because the people who play real cricket are being made into bigger mercenaries than some of them already are to play in this absolute circus. There are to be no county or geographical loyalties either; the skills needed to play serious cricket will be further prostituted; and some players who would normally turn out for higher forms of cricket will make this variant of the game their chief priority, for financial reasons.

First class cricket is already a serious casualty of this format before a ball has been bowled because of the way the Championship has been driven to the margins of the season and truncated in size. Its effect on Test cricket can, therefore, only be entirely negative.

If members of county clubs start voting with their feet at this treatment, some of those clubs will go under. Several of them expect they won’t be playing first-class cricket at all in a decade’s time. It is hard to blame the players, who have to make a living however they can. But for serious clubs to go along with this, and not at least to campaign for the formal creation of a two-code game with separate pools of players, shows how little they understand about the practice of cutting their own throats.