The great Hundred debate: Simon Wilde v George Dobell

FROM THE MAGAZINE: Unnecessary propaganda project that achieves nothing or worthwhile experiment attracting a new audience to cricket? Wilde and Dobell do battle over The Hundred

This is an abridged version of a feature that appeared in the Summer 2023 issue of The Cricketer. To read the full article, grab a copy of the magazine by clicking here.

Dobell: The Hundred is unnecessary. Achieves nothing that couldn't have been achieved with a backed T20 competition involving the counties and some free-to-air TV. And there's so much propaganda surrounding it. It's also losing money.

Wilde: Who says?

Dobell: Fanos Hira. The Worcestershire chair. He wrote a report on it. Concluded it had lost £9m in two years. Then, if you add the £1.3m a year the ECB give to each of the counties for allowing it, that's £58m.

Wilde: You sure? My reading of it is that it made £11.8m in 2022… now I know that's less than was expected, but nevertheless that's money that the game didn't have.

You talk about the £23.4m a year to the counties, but that's a good thing, isn't it? I spoke to a county chief and he said they'd be stuffed without the £1.3m a year.

Dobell: Yes, but it was the counties' money already, wasn't it? Besides, look at the hidden costs: Blast crowds are down, the Championship has to be played at the bookends of the season, the One-Day Cup loses the best 100 white-ball players in the country.

Wilde: I agree that it's damaging the domestic season. They need to be more confident that other competitions can run alongside it… In terms of the money, the ECB told me at the outset that media rights to The Hundred contributed £200m to the 2020–24 deal. That's decent money even if there are, inevitably, running costs.

As for the Blast, Somerset have just been crowned champions and they made good money; their crowds were excellent.

Dobell: I don't look at it like that. The overall expenditure on The Hundred's first two seasons is about £110m. By comparison, the ECB has spent £137.5m on international cricket since 2018. Whichever way you look at it, The Hundred has been eye-wateringly, unsustainably expensive.

That also doesn't take into account the allocation of resource among ECB departments. Who can say, for example, what percentage of the time of the communications department has been consumed by talking about The Hundred?

This report told us, once and for all, that The Hundred is not making money… yet that was one of the great justifications for it.

Wilde: We clearly won't agree on the money. I do admit that the format is problematic. When it first appeared most people thought 100 balls per innings was a ludicrous idea.

It was a cynical tactic/bit of marketing by the ECB to circumvent the problem of the counties not wanting another T20 tournament to steal their thunder. So they were happy and relieved. It was a strategic manoeuvre, and got the thing off on a bad foot.

Dobell: There was this suggestion that other nations would adopt the format. But why would they undermine their own T20 competitions by doing that? Nobody else plays the format. So it's tough to sustain an argument that it prepares players especially well for international cricket.

It was the vanity product of a regime which propagated it on the back of vast expense and opaque accountability.

Wilde: No, I really do think that it could safeguard cricket's future. It's a tournament that the ECB can call their own. It futureproofs us against the death of bilateral cricket.

With T20 leagues on the rise – three new ones so far this year – it gives us our own. The IPL is flying. We were being left behind. The ECB saw which way the wind was blowing, and they have been proved right. As international cricket divides, the English game might come to appreciate that we have this thing.

Surely you agree that The Hundred has been good for women's cricket?

Dobell: Yes, the women's Hundred competition offers almost none of the downsides of the men's. There are eight regional women's teams, for example, and eight Hundred teams.

Given the growth in women's sport, is it unreasonable to think it could be worth the £36m a year Sky are understood to pay for the competition at present? Is it unreasonable to see no downside in letting the men's Hundred die?

Wilde: Well, I think that we are in the early stages of all this – we don't know how it will unfold. Of course they have the option of making it T20. And of course, we are forgetting terrestrial TV. That exposure is good, a new audience and all that.

Plus, there are eight teams in it. There are too many teams in the Blast…

Dobell: You could have two divisions with promotion and relegation.

Wilde: No, you can't have relegation. You can't have the Test grounds disappearing off the telly. You cannot have players like Sam Curran in the lower tier. They are trying to create stars…

Dobell: Seems to work in football. Adds peril and meaning to matches at both ends of the table.

Wilde: The Hundred has also brought in new audiences – families, members of minority communities, and young fans who like being at the start of something.

Dobell: Which is great. And you could, for sure, argue that it's worthwhile even if it is losing money.

But I think we could have found a new audience using existing T20 competitions without alienating our existing audiences. TV audiences were down last year and it's not made money. Let's move on.

Inside our Summer 2023 issue of The Cricketer magazine, you'll also find:

With The Hundred dominating the next month, George Dobell and Simon Wilde debate the ECB's pet project in our Summer issue. Plus:
- Barney Ronay: is Chris Woakes England's greatest home allrounder?
- David Gower likes Bazball but asks for control to the risk-taking
- Vic Marks says everything is working against English spinners
- Mike Selvey claims ‘bowl-and-hope’ at Lord’s sold spectators short
- Nick Friend explores how England Women are closing the gap
- Tanya Aldred reflects on how far women’s cricket has come
- Nick Howson explains why The Hundred has a hard task this August
- George Dobell looks at the ICEC Report and West Indies’ woe
- Nick Compton on living in his grandfather’s shadow
- Comedian Geoff Norcott tells us why he loves cricket
- Stu Forster is the latest famous photographer in our photo series
And much, much more...

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