The August Shambles - "A Success"

 

"The Hundred has been a roaring success this year – but changes are coming"

Will Macpherson Daily Telegraph

It was a classic slip of the tongue. Speaking to Sky on the opening day of this year’s Hundred, Sanjay Patel, the tournament’s managing director, said “we are all set for the final year”, before hastily correcting himself, “the third year, sorry”.

The Freudian slip is easily enough explained. Months before, the England and Wales Cricket Board had announced that Patel would be leaving.

But the comment arrived as the tournament began under a cloud. The second season, 2022, had been flat, for whatever reason. Many were angry that a brilliant Ashes summer was over before August began, and that there would be no elite red-ball cricket played in a prime month. The rain that beset late July flooded into August, with seven of the first 14 games washed out across the two competitions. The first headline the tournament garnered was unwanted, when Love Island’s Chris Hughes – a curious choice as the BBC’s boundary interviewer – compared Southern Brave’s Maitlan Brown to Barbie.

What made the timing of Patel’s remark most unfortunate, though, was speculation over the Hundred’s future. Since April reports suggested the new ECB chief executive Richard Gould and chair Richard Thompson were plotting a new “bigger and better” path ahead for the divisive tournament, and the wider English game. Five years earlier, when they filled the same roles at Surrey, county cricket’s commercial powerhouse, they were critics of the Hundred. Now in charge, they were publicly supportive of the tournament, but privately exploring ways they could shift its direction. The departure of Patel, highly respected at ECB, was part of this.
How has this year gone?

Four weeks later, as the dust settles on the third edition of the Hundred, the mood is much more positive. It has been, by most measures, a very good year for the tournament.

In the men’s tournament, much has improved. Welsh Fire are no longer duds, coming close to making the finals, with the draft system helping the competitive balance. There have been more than a dozen genuinely close games and the table has been tightly bunched.

England players have been involved after the Ashes, providing a sprinkling of stardust, and the roster of overseas talent has been better, in an increasingly competitive market.

The Hundred’s relationship with the wider English men’s game still needs work, but improved this year. It was welcome that 13 players returned to their counties to play in the Metro Bank One-Day Cup when not required in the Hundred. That has the dual purpose of lifting the standard of the ODC, while also preventing very good cricketers spending their August warming pine.

The ODC will inevitably continue to suffer while it has second-tier status, but something has stirred off broadway. Somerset sold more tickets (13,000) for one-day cricket than any year this century, while Surrey hosted around 7,500 for their match against Kent. Embattled Worcestershire have had some outstanding crowds, while various outgrounds (which are increasingly starved of County Championship action) hosted strong attendances.

Many counties and their 40-50,000 members (19,000 of which are now at Surrey) remain disenfranchised by the tournament, which leaves the likes of Taunton with just four days of cricket in August, and there are fears that the fees counties receive for hosting the Hundred are widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. County chief executives appreciate, however, the annual £1.3m golden handshake they receive from the ECB for the Hundred’s existence.

The Hundred’s women’s competition had less to improve, but it was entertaining again, and has been helped by the introduction of a draft, which redistributed talent. Oval Invincibles, twice champions, did not make the finals, while Welsh Fire and Northern Superchargers did for the first time. It was a blot that the women’s eliminator was rained off when the men’s was completed, another work-on for next year.

Attendances have been strong. ECB data says 580,000 tickets were sold for the tournament (more than the first two years), with around 300,000 people in early enough for the women’s games. The women’s final had an attendance of 21,636, a record for women’s cricket in the UK. Indeed, record ground attendances of well over 10,000 have been daily occurrences for women’s matches. The target demographic is being tapped: 30 per cent of ticket-holders were women, 23 per cent were kids, and 41 per cent families.

Given most cricketers have batting pads older than the tournament, crowds are surprisingly engaged and increasingly partisan, as reflected by the remarkable amount of merchandise sold, which was up 21 per cent this year.

Sky, who invest around £200m in English cricket each year, are delighted with the tournament’s progress, with an eight per cent increase in viewers per men’s match and 20 per cent per women’s. And on social media – an increasingly important driver of audience – it has provided enough viral moments to cut through, such as Shabnim Ismail’s hat-trick when Birmingham Phoenix needed four to win from three balls, Spencer Johnson taking three for one in 20 balls, and Tammy Beaumont and Harry Brook’s extraordinary centuries.


That the Hundred would still have critics three years in is inevitable. It is new, gaudy and has at times been very badly handled by the ECB, who alienated large swathes of their core support in creating it. But, this year, there is evidence to suggest that it is winning critics over and finding its feet. It is still not perfectly embedded into the English cricketing landscape, but is making progress.
What changes could be afoot?

In 2024, the Hundred will ostensibly stay the same. It will sit a week earlier in the calendar and be played at the same time as an England men’s Test match (not to mention clashing with the Olympics in Paris), but overall there will be no difference.

The first issue to address from 2025 is the free-to-air broadcaster. The BBC’s TV deal for cricket – both international (they show England a handful of men’s and women’s T20 games live) and the Hundred – expires at the end of next summer. At this stage, while sources indicate that the BBC will bid to extend, optimism is no more than lukewarm that a deal will be agreed. It is unclear whether this is because the BBC do not like what they have, are worried about how it might change, finances, or any other whims of the national broadcaster.

The ECB would be loath to lose BBC TV, who they spent years nurturing back to the game and had a say in the tournament’s development, especially given the cross-promotion they can provide on social media, radio and other platforms, but are confident of securing another free-to-air broadcaster if a deal cannot be agreed.

The principle broadcast deal, with Sky, runs until 2028, and includes the tournament in its current form. When going to market in around 2027 with their next major rights deal, from 2029, the ECB would be able to pitch to broadcasters whatever competitions and events they like.

However, change to the Hundred could come before 2029, because there is increasing consensus that some sort of private investment is required in English cricket.

An injection of private cash is the trend across the global game, as boards look to diversify income streams. Broadcasters’ interest in pumping in millions for rights – especially for bilateral men’s internationals, once cricket’s financial lifeblood – is waning.

This year, tournaments have launched in South Africa, the UAE and the USA with significant private backing. Major League Cricket is in July, thus becoming the first to turn up in the northern hemisphere summer, which was once exclusively English. Tournaments in North America (MLC plus the Global T20 in Canada) and the Caribbean Premier League bookend the Hundred, and are genuine rivals because they pay players more. First they will trump what the ECB can pay overseas talent, and eventually English players, too. So the Hundred needs to raise men’s salaries, but also women’s, given it has a gender pay-gap that is currently too wide.

To secure private investment of any form, the permission of the counties – and their usual two-thirds majority – would be required. Sky would also have to be on board with any changes to what they have agreed until 2028.

Views on how to go about getting private investment differ.

Last November, it emerged that private equity firm Bridgepoint had offered the ECB £300m for a 75 per cent stake in the tournament. It was rejected, with Thompson saying that it would take “a few billion” to “sell the summer”.

The simplest path ahead for the ECB would be to offset the diminishing value of rights by following something akin to the Bridgepoint route: selling the Hundred – some or all of individual teams or some or all of the whole tournament. Certain Indian Premier League franchises are said to be keen to invest immediately if they could, especially in London teams. Rob Key, the England men’s managing director, argued in Telegraph Sport last year that an eventual sale would fund the rest of the game, especially the talent-producing counties.

“It will sustain it, with the money it will bring in in time,” said Key. “Any money the Hundred makes, because of the game’s constitution, has to be spread through the game, for counties, recreational, the women’s game, everywhere. Sometimes you have to be careful what you wish for [criticising the Hundred].”

Gould and Thompson are also open to investment, but their vision is different. Before and after he worked at Surrey, Gould was CEO at Somerset CCC and Bristol City FC. All three experiences have informed his sporting world view, and he is a staunch supporter of the county game, and of the pyramid style system that has worked in football for centuries.

Their plans are nascent, with insiders saying that “only two men know what they are fully planning” and key stakeholders such as Sky yet to be formally consulted. As many as five options – starting with the status quo – remain on the table.

But their dream scenario is what is being called “the investable pyramid”. That would see the Hundred transformed so that all 18 counties are represented in a promotion and relegation structure, starting with the current eight in a top division and the other 10 in the bottom. A third division, perhaps featuring the National (formerly Minor) Counties, could even exist below that. The format remains open for debate, but a return to T20 seems likely. Relegation and promotion between the divisions may not be immediate or even annual.

Initially, the ECB and host county would launch a joint venture for each team. In time, but perhaps immediately, investment would be invited from inside and outside the UK. The host county would manage ticket sales, marketing, squad building and the rest, all of which have largely been ECB responsibilities until now. Investing in, say, Surrey would cost more than, say, Derbyshire.

It is thought to be unlikely that this new tournament would replace both the Hundred and the T20 Blast. The Blast may yet live on alongside what remains.
Can the changes work?

Gould and Thompson’s ideas are well-intentioned. They come from a desire to unite a game that has been divided, in part by mistakes made by previous ECB regimes over the Hundred, and to not limit the game’s biggest show to seven cities. If they work, they would help counties stand on their own two feet, and not be reliant on handouts. The plans would be out of step with the rest of the cricketing world, which can be at once a strength and weakness.

But they would have several challenges to overcome, and there is private angst over possible changes. “Pie in the sky,” is an expression used by various sources spoken to by Telegraph Sport.

There is a fear that in a bid to please more people, compromise could leave both county diehards and Hundred ‘ultras’ unsatisfied. That is in part because plans remain unclear. Would the teams be named after counties, or towns and cities? Would players just play for their county, or move in the month of August? Would every game be broadcast with full bells and whistles, or just the top division? And therefore what happens if the best players are not in the top division? Or, indeed, the biggest grounds?

Another strand of scepticism is because a lot of time, effort and money has gone into building the Hundred, which many believe to now be on an upward curve. Some sceptics point to the fact that their plans appear driven through a male lens and that even on their newly-formed, highly-influential Professional Game Committee, there is just one woman (Rachel Baillache, whose sporting background is not cricket).

Where does the women’s game fit into this? Could the baby (the women’s game) be thrown out with the bathwater (decades-long disputes over the men’s structure)? The women’s Hundred cannot continue unaffected by the removal of the men’s competition. For all the strides made, the women’s game is not ready for an 18-team competition, but benefits immensely from alignment with the men’s.

Any change of the format of matches would hurt the women’s game. By having two hundred-ball matches in the day, a women’s and men’s product is done in a little over six hours, which suits both broadcasters and attending families, who are on their way home around 9pm. Double headers – which did happen by accident due to the pandemic but have been a roaring success – would be close to unworkable in a T20 tournament. Women and men playing in the same colours back to back is one of the Hundred’s points of difference, up against all team sports.

There are also doubts because many well-placed observers simply do not believe the changes can work, and consider them a retrograde step. IPL franchises, who are investing in leagues around the world, have little interest in promotion and relegation. And if the biggest investors wanted to partner with counties, they surely would have done so by now. Having come for a look at the tournament, potential Indian investors are said to be baffled by reports of change.

One of the reasons the Hundred exists is because broadcasters want pithy competitions with many fewer than 18 teams in which every game can be shown live, making it easy to follow, and meaning none of the big stars or stadiums get relegated. They would be furious if Jos Buttler or Lord’s dropped into Division Two.

It seems probable that a two-thirds majority among the counties would be found to back change, but persuading broadcasters and investors will be more difficult. And if one or both are not keen, the sums are unlikely to add up. With more rivals to the English game than ever before, the sums need to add up to keep pace.

Gould and Thompson will carefully consult in the months and years to come, but English cricket has a decision to make. The Hundred, after all the rancour, might be on the verge of delivering on its objectives, to bring in a new audience, and financially safeguard the English game. Is it really time to take another leap into the unknown?