The Hundred still seems like cricket on a fast-food diet

HUW TURBERVILL: I don’t know about you, but if I was taking my son or daughter to an event, the last thing I would want to feel is that I was being hurried along the drive-thru

^{The Hundred trials are ongoing (picture: T20 Blast action)}

I have digested reports of The Hundred trials and – I am sorry – but it still feels like the equivalent of wolfing down a McDonald’s.

I don’t know about you, but if I was taking my son or daughter to an event, the last thing I would want to feel is that I was being hurried along the drive-thru.

That the first innings of the trial at Trent Bridge lasted ‘only’ 65 minutes! Wow. (Is that a good thing?)

The problem traditionalists have with T20 is that sometimes you don’t have time to take stock, to analyse, to dissect and, yes, digest. That is what marks cricket out as the most cerebral of physical sports.

For it all to go by in a blur doesn’t work for me, and many thousands of fans who enjoy the longer form of the game.

This perpetual need for speed, the ‘perennial time-scarcity problems’ of the modern world, as it is called, are constantly cited – but go to a baseball match in the United States and games can go on for four or five hours. Matches in the IPL can last four hours.

Will fans buy into 'sets' and strategic timeouts?

But this is going to be even shorter than T20...

Apart from the BBC’s need to cut, at 9pm, to Gardeners’ World or Celebrity Baking in Antique Shops (that one hasn’t been made yet, but I have patented the idea and I await their response), why the rush?

The challenge for the ECB will be that if they can tempt this hidden, slumbering new audience that they believe is out there to a game, can they keep them?

I have no doubt that many will go to sample it. There will definitely be an initial buzz. But can it be sustained?

The Hundred on trial: James Coyne went to see what the fuss is about

Those rule changes then…

The one that will see batsmen unable to cross when a catch is taken is not bad. It denies the new batter an opportunity to get settled out in the middle at the non-striker’s end, and instead it exposes him to immediate danger (unless it is at the end of the over). It makes them the middle man (or woman) in a potential hat-trick. Yep, fine.

I hate the thought of sub fielders being allowed on willy-nilly, however. Daryl Mitchell called it “messy”. I just think it is a perversion of the concept of team sport – it is your 11 best cricketers against another 11. And cricket consists of batting, bowing and fielding. If Charlie ‘Chubs’ Chatsworth can hit sixes but cannot field for toffee, tough!

I also see there is a call for new terminology.

Our man Huw Turbervill is yet to be won over

Because the overs will now consist of five balls, not six, some want a new name for it, like ‘sets’.

As my colleague James Coyne points out, fielders praise a bowler for a ‘good set’ – as in a set of six balls.

But a more formal rebranding? No! ‘Sets’ belong to tennis.

What next? A bowler beats the bat and it is called an ‘ace?’

Test cricket has had eight, six and four-ball overs. What's the problem?

And speaking of tennis, the ‘strategic time-out’ in The Hundred smacks of those (allegedly) faux injury breaks that have caused such rows, involving Serena Williams, Novak Djokovic and co.

North captain Samit Patel used one to perfection, apparently, disrupting the momentum of the South innings.

Is that a good thing? Is that sport?

Hmmm.