Hundred match between Leeds Sunrisers and London Spirit this week
The Hundred a 100 ball a side cricket competition is in its first season as a franchised operation.
The franchisers already own cricket sides around the globe all of which play 20 over cricket with the Indian Premier League being the template.
A stated aim of the franchisers is to move towards 20 overs without a timescale being mentioned, but in the context of The Hundred being the second biggest short form tournament in the world after the IPL (which is played earlier in the year)
The drift to 20 overs appears already to be underway.
In the Hundred Mk1 bowlers could have 5 or 10 ball sets with a maximum of 20 balls. The word ‘set’ has now disappeared and ‘over’ is being used although the focus is on the number of balls. Overs in cricket have been fixed by one of the Laws of Cricket to six balls, but only from 1980. Before that it varied and the Laws of Cricket change frequently.
Secondly its notable that Hundred statistics are now being added into T20 ones. Who made this decision is unclear to me at least, although since the two forms are increasingly similar some logic can be seen.
The real issue is where all this leads.
If The Hundred as a franchised operation moves to 20 overs it will be in some kind of competition with the existing T20 Blast which is County based. An undercurrent to The Hundred for some has been to replace or reduce the number of Counties most of which are mutually owned.
If the IPL is the template there will be demands for more Hundred matches over a longer timespan (this has already started in fact).
Secondly while Hundred games are meant to last for 2.5 hours to fit TV schedules (the BBC in particular) some games are already going beyond that. IPL matches tend to meander on for quite a while. That might mean, for example, splitting the current women’s and men’s double header format.
The key thing here must be not to let the Franchise owners and the ECB railroad through changes without discussion with players, fans and the existing County structures
Leave a comment