Here comes The Hundred – or should that be The Hindered?

HUW TURBERVILL: The ECB's new 100-ball competition is finally here. But how do we judge its success and will it be embraced by the game? It is a summer full of questions which not produce answers

You can’t miss it. The publicity machine for The Hundred has been in overdrive for the last few weeks, ahead of the mega-launch. There’s a tie-in with Lego (the ECB putting the building blocks in place there). And a partnership with a film called The Croods 2 (No, me neither). That’s not enough for you? OK, apparently Benny Hill is playing on the opening night. Must be an archive recording of Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West). (No, that’s the singer, Becky Hill. Ed). Oh, I see…

There have also been some frankly astonishing articles in recent days that lack objectivity and seriously blur the lines between editorial and advertorial.

This Hundred malarkey is all a bit disorientating for us readers of The Cricketer, isn’t it? And existing fans in general. According to the Cricket Supporters’ Association, 63 per cent feel negatively about it. And when counties like Lancashire and Nottinghamshire mention it on their websites, it enrages supporters as much as Liverpool legends managing Everton.

You may have noticed that for a while I have been attempting to pin down how we judge the success of The Hundred. 

We must assume that it will be given a run now until the expiry of the current Sky/BBC TV deal until 2024. 

That’s despite most of the counties not wanting it, and only agreeing to it after they were told they’d be paid £1.3m a year extra. Turkeys voting for Christmas, and all that...

I’ve been speculating that it will be about crowd sizes, and the quality of talent playing in it, and if there is an incline in recreational participation. 

Actually, though, only one thing really matters – whether the telly companies like it. Because if they do, they will pay the same amount or more for it again from, we assume, 2025–29. And if they don’t, teams like Oval Invincibles and Manchester Originals will have a short life, and the counties will take centre stage in the prime piece of real estate in the English summer again… a premier league of eight counties and a ‘Championship’ of 10 in T20 will probably be given a go after all.

It cannot be about crowds anyhow – it’s been reported that Glamorgan are having to give tickets away to local clubs. So much for new fans!

Harrison’s dream

I was looking for something else when I stumbled across it. It was my preview in the match programme of the first T20 international in this country, in 2005: between England and Australia. I talked about how the format came into being in 2003, after England’s disastrous early exit from the World Cup that they hosted, in 1999. There had been a dramatic decline in county crowds. 

I quote England and Wales Cricket Board’s marketing manager. “One-day and four-day games were being played at times when people couldn’t watch them, and people just did not have six or seven hours spare to go to a game or a day’s play. There are 20 or 30 evening leagues which have been playing 20-over cricket in England for decades, but our challenge was to broaden the concept. How were we to present it to the public? T20 could be vital in taking cricket to new frontiers, to countries who play the game already, like China, the United States and Canada. It’s a product ready-made for that.”

And do you know who that marketing manager was? Why, it was Tom Harrison, now ECB chief executive. 

So what went wrong with T20? The Vitality Blast attracts decent crowds and shows year-on-year growth, pandemics permitting. But it’s been 16 years and it hasn’t really taken off in those aforementioned countries, although as ever, there are stirrings in the States. Is that why Harrison and his team decided that T20 didn’t cut it anymore? Is that why they invented The Hundred?

One thing I have noticed is how the Blast is trash-talked these days. Quite a few journalists and administrators have told me lately “it’s just a p**s-up”. One of the taglines for this tournament is: “A safe experience for all the family.” 

Very in keeping with this new puritanical age that we seem to have found ourselves in. It’s all rather reminiscent of Blackadder’s aunt, Lady Whiteadder: “Drink? Wicked child! Drink is urine for the last leper in Hell!”

Those who have been to a Big Bash match in Australia seem to have been bowled over by the families in the crowd, and the atmosphere. 

The ECB say that there are 10m people who claim to like cricket in this country, but only 1.1m go to games. 

So is The Hundred like Heineken – reaching the parts other competitions cannot reach?

A difficult birth

An eight(ish)-team T20-type tournament to rival the IPL and Big Bash was expected, nay, overdue. When the 100-ball thing was announced via email, however, I thought it was a joke (it was near April 1). We can’t say ‘overs’, you tell us? Ohhhh….K. Fifteen six-ball – err – blocks – with a 10-baller at the end, eh? What the actual (as the kids say)? Actually, I made blocks up. I still don’t know what to call them. Batches? I’m told it’s balls and balls only. Well, if you say so... 

When the initial PR seemed to delight in antagonising trad fans, with Eoin Morgan giggling about the glee of his non-cricket-loving pals, it got beyond a joke (sorry to speak ill of Saint Eoin, the World Cup conquistador). 

So what’s actually wrong with The Hundred – apart from so many biffs over midwicket (but that’s the same with T20), and trashing 150 years of cricket heritage? And endangering the long-term future of county cricket?

I’ll put my cards on the table: I have a love and loyalty for county cricket going back 40 years.

But… some of these new names are meaningless – Rockets in Nottingham (after the Space Museum in Leicester perhaps?), and the originals of Manchester (who? why?)… and the Invincibles of The Oval (that’s setting themselves up for a fall, isn’t it?). 

The West Country should never have been ostracised (ditto East Anglia and the bit just below Hadrian’s Wall and Yorkshire). 

Then there’s the sheer expense of it: £25m a year in marketing… £1.3m a summer to each county; and some of the marketing – so excruciatingly inane – with eyes popping out of heads and so forth. It’s partially/possibly a vanity project for people who want to invent things. And a false premise: they think they can flog the format abroad, after failing to patent T20 (no evidence of any nibbles so far). 

It’s all about wresting control from the shires, of course, but beware their revenge...

You get the impression it’s all a bit of a wheeze for some of the players who don’t comprehend what county teams represent to fans – and a (fairly) handsome paycheque of course (although Covid has pruned that). 

Simon Wilde of The Sunday Times reports that commentators are being schooled to not mention players from the past like Mike Procter. Have these people not read George Orwell?

Then there are the B-list pop acts to accompany it all – revealing a lack of faith in the purity of the product itself. You don’t believe me? Ask your kids what they think of Lady Leshurr and Everything Everything. Mine, aged 19, 16 and 12, have not heard of them. Hiring them shows a lack of confidence in the actual product. 

Cricket’s return to BBC TV is undeniably a good thing – though tossing aside T20 and counties wasn’t necessary. No one has ever verified if the BBC said no to county cricket – but that could have been dealt with anyway. A two-division T20 with the shires giving themselves city names as Warwickshire have done already (Birmingham Bears) would have been fine. 

So the next three years – until the TV deal runs out – will be interesting; I don’t think talk of a civil war in English cricket is far-fetched. 

There is some interest among my 16-year-old son and his friends. They have bought tickets for Oval Invincibles v Welsh Fire. The Blast group stages passed them by. A novelty? Time will tell.

I suppose also it would be unfair to judge it too harshly this summer – so many stellar players (more than 40 at the last count) have pulled out because of Covid. Presumably Kane Williamson, David Warner and co will come again; and the short-format batting skills and seam/spin skillsets will be better than we have seen in this country (if you like that sort of thing). 

And it’s a coup for the women’s game – a boost in profile. Near equal billing and all that. Still, though, things aren’t working out smoothly in that department. Isabelle Westbury’s scoop in The Telegraph that Australian women internationals have snubbed an additional £10,000 offer and withdrawn is just the latest in a long list of setbacks. 

One cannot help feeling in fact, that after its disastrous launch, the way it’s been delayed by the pandemic, and so many setbacks, it should not just be renamed… The Hindered.