HUW TURBERVILL: I have been told the extended over is dead, and that The Hundred will no longer have overs of unequal lengths. I conclude from that that the new competition, starting in 2020, will consist of two innings of 20 five-ball overs
Bowlers will not have to bowl a 10-ball over in The Hundred
So farewell the 10-ball over. Short-lived. Unloved. To go and live in an afterlife already occupied by the Sinclair C5, The DeLorean, Betamax, MiniDiscs and Dennis Lillee’s aluminium bat.
I have been told the extended over is dead, and that The Hundred will no longer have overs of unequal lengths. I conclude from that, therefore, that the new competition, starting in 2020, will consist of two innings of 20 five-ball overs.
The Cricketer still believes that abandoning the world-standard T20 is dangerous. It would be a departure from the phenomenally successfully IPL and Big Bash. I fear world stars will take the new format less seriously. We shall see… The Cricketer has mapped out its own blueprint for English cricket scheduling from 2020 in the August issue, out this week.
The Hundred was announced on April 19 (18 days after you-know-what).
It was met with ridicule and scorn on social media, which, let’s face it, is not always necessarily the best gauge of whether something is good or not.
The initial plan was for 15 six-ball overs plus one of 10.
Later it was suggested that it could be 14 six-ball overs, plus two of eight.
What format will fans be watching in 2020?
Personally I hate having an innings consisting of unequal overs.
The indication is that the ECB are coming around to 20 five-ball overs.
Yes it deviates from the standard six-ball overs used in Tests/first-class, List A/ODIs, T20/T20Is, but cricket used to have eight-ball overs, so it is not such a dramatic departure.
This is less confusing for youngsters.
There were still people on Twitter having fun this morning, suggesting one over of 100, two overs of 50, 100 overs of one, and so on. The ECB has an uphill battle silencing the scorn now, after a hazardous PR birth for their baby.
There was speculation that having 100 balls in an innings rather than 120 was at the bequest of the BBC, who are at last again going to show live cricket. Apparently this is not the case.
I am told it was the idea of someone in the department of chief commercial officer and managing director of the new tournament, Sanjay Patel.
The Cricketer editor Simon Hughes also seems to have had the idea for The Hundred a few years back.
OTHER 'POSSIBLE' COMBINATIONS100 x 1-ball overs1 x 100-ball over10 x 10-ball overs5 x 20-ball overs50 x 2-ball overs2 x 50-ball overs4 x 25-ball overs25 x 4-ball overs
I think if the BBC had demanded a shorter format to fit in with a three-hour TV slot, we would have understood it more.
The fact that they did not makes it more puzzling.
T20 innings can still be played in 75 minutes – Gloucestershire and Kent at Bristol managed it the other day allowing fans to watch England play Croatia in the World Cup semi-finals.
It was certainly the norm in 2003 when the tournament started (I was there on the first night, Hampshire v Sussex at the Rose Bowl).
If they are really struggling to fit 120 balls in, how about four blocks of five overs, without swapping ends, or even two blocks of 10? At least players’ stats will be comparable.
As long as the current team is in place at the ECB, however, I believe we are wedded to The Hundred. They love the concept of a 100-ball countdown.
The counties are also delighted that they are keeping T20 for themselves. Whether they demanded this, lobbied for this, or if the ECB chose to deviate from this off their own backs is something yet to be established.
The Evening Standard’s Will Macpherson reported on Tuesday that the ECB have scheduled their first trial events for The Hundred, at Trent Bridge for men (expected to be between September 14–23) and Loughborough for women. The events are expected to be held behind closed doors.
Let’s hope that is not a portent of things to come.
Posted by alan smith on 23/07/2018 at 10:12
Great article in the i newspaper on 21 July by Jonathan Liew (100 ball circus). Graves out.
Posted by Murray Hedgcock on 20/07/2018 at 15:34
The five-ball over lives on, in the annual match between The Gold Bats of The PG Wodehouse Society (UK) and the XI of The Sherlock Holmes Society of London, played in the charming rural setting of West Wycombe. Sherlock Holmes once decreed, "It is always 1895", so this fixture is played according to the Laws of that age, including the five-ball over. As The Gold Bats umpire for several years, I can confirm that this works perfectly well - which in no way affects my bitter opposition to the ludicrous concept of The Hundred, regardless of its overs structure.
Posted by Michael Shea on 19/07/2018 at 08:35
Just forget the whole concept of overs altogether and have a minimum of five bowlers ball a maximum of twenty balls each. The fielding side can end a succession of balls from one bowler at any time, which can range from one to twenty.
Posted by Mark hefter on 18/07/2018 at 17:23
The joy if they bring this farce in only for the hundred balls to never be 100 balls because of wides and no balls
Posted by NIGEL HENDERSON on 18/07/2018 at 15:33
I think it would be beneficial for all if not only the trial events but the competition itself were played behind closed doors.
Posted by AB on 18/07/2018 at 14:50
The normal way of getting though T20 games quicker is to play 15 8-ball overs. Same number of balls (so averages and par scores still transferable, and spectators still get the same value for money), but less faffing around swapping ends. Saves about 10 minutes per innings, which is about the same as knocking 1 ball off the end of each over. If the idea is to speed up the process, why not just do this? As an incredibly common format used the length and breadth of the country, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the ECB had never even heard of it, so out of touch with recreational cricket they are.
Posted by David Henderson on 18/07/2018 at 13:12
If the ECB wants yet another new format, it really needs to be radically different. A 10-ball over won't do it, nor will 20 5-ball overs. If the new competition is to be really fresh and establish an attractive niche for itself, it needs to import some of the sophisticated strategy & tactics of the longer red ball form of the game which makes this far and away the best format of the many. To do this in a very truncated form is difficult. The place to look for this is to give the fielding side some more options, given that T20 is very biased in favour of the batting side. My suggestion is as follows: (1) Retain the 100 ball per side option (2) Allow each over bowled by one bowler to be of a varying length - anything between 4 and 8 balls (3) The fielding side can decide without advance notice how long each over is going to be. This will allow the fielding captain to decide how short or long to make an over, leaving the batting side for example to guess whether they'll have the opportunity to blast another boundary this over or seek a rapid single for the facing batsman to retain the strike. (4) Each bowler will be limited to four overs, a minimum of 16 balls and a maximum of 32 balls. This allows more flexibility for the fielding captain over the use of his attack - one 'on song' bowler could bowl nearly a third of the innings. (5) The total of 100 balls bowled would be achieved via a minimum of 13 overs and a maximum of 25. With this kind of radical approach, the new competition could have something very different and very appealing. It would also give bowlers more scope to develop their white-ball skills. Without it, it is likely to become yet another T20-like competition in a market that is showing signs of saturation already.
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