PCA chief warns over Hundred coaching

Professional Cricketers’ Association chairman Daryl Mitchell has warned there must be a clear separation between the coaching set-ups of teams in The Hundred and the host counties or the new format could kill the county game.

Championed by the England and Wales Cricket Board, the 100-ball format will see eight city-based franchises compete over five weeks next summer, with the intention of bringing a new audience to the sport.

But the project has been dogged by criticisms of its quirky rules, controversies surrounding its broadcast rights and complaints about the unintended consequences it may have for the wider game - and it is the latter that is causing the players’ union the biggest headaches.

Speaking on the day he was re-elected for a second and final two-year term as PCA chairman, Mitchell said the union is concerned the competition will not live up to its promises, and could even do lasting damage, if a fundamental issue is unresolved.

“The teams in The Hundred must have independent head coaches or directors of cricket,” the 35-year-old Worcestershire opener said.

“They can’t be making decisions about The Hundred one minute and then picking their county sides 10 minutes later - there have to be two sides, two budgets, two sets of selectors or this could be suicide for the smaller counties.

“Control of the budget is the key issue and the non-host counties would have to be very naive not to be worried about this, as we’ve already seen this situation play out in Australia.”

That is a reference to the row that flared up over allegations that some players were given ‘bundled’ contracts to play in state cricket in order to circumvent the Big Bash’s salary cap.

PCA chief executive David Leatherdale explained the union was not “questioning anybody’s integrity” but said that the risk of cross-subsidy and other conflicts of interest were “obvious” and the “perception of doing right” was important, too.