ECB CHIEF HAILS THE HUNDRED

ENGLISH cricket’s top blazer insists big names will flock to the Hundred next year – despite a snub from India captain Virat Kohli, the world’s most marketable player.

Tom Harrison (above), chief executive at the England & Wales Cricket Board, confirmed the controversial 100 balls-aside tournament will be at the heart of Lord’s strategy to reinvent the wheel.

Announcing the ECB plan to invest £180million over five years on their new format, Harrison claimed overseas big guns will squeeze the Hundred into an already-crowded sloggers’ schedule between the Indian Premier League and Big Bash in Australia.

He said: “I believe we will be very successful in getting players to come over. I think it will be a good training ground for international Twenty20.”

After last summer’s Test series in England, Kohli (above) distanced himself from being a guinea pig for yet another short form of the game, saying: “I don’t want to be a testing sort of cricketer for any new format.”

But armed with a 36-page strategic document outlining a plan to make a nation fall in love with cricket again after a 15-year absence from terrestrial TV, Harrison revealed the 16.4-over innovation was only “days” from being signed off. But as well as having no official title yet, there will be no new venues and there are still no names for the eight big-city franchises.

Harrison said: “We can’t keep relying on the same audience. There is room for growth. I want to shed cricket of its tags of elitism and privilege. They have no place in the future of our game.”

With the rights sold to Sky Sports and the BBC, he added: “The Hundred is a profitable venture before a ball is bowled.”