Players are being won over by Hundred format but hard work starts now to convince counties
Trial matches have been generally well received but Nick Hoult reveals patience off the pitch is running out
There was a sense of relief at the England and Wales Cricket Board this week after its pilot Hundred matches were well received by the players. The mood at the ECB’s board meeting on Wednesday morning, when it was provided with an update after four days of trial games, was optimistic and energised. “This is our big gamble and the sense now is if we don’t do it, someone else will,” said one source. “The potential around that new competition is being realised and there is a lot of support around it.”
The players, previously sceptical, were mostly won over after a day of trial matches for the women at Loughborough and three days for the men at Trent Bridge. They enjoyed the shortened format with its new tactical dimensions. There is more tweaking to come but, after months of ridicule, the ECB is settled on what the game will look like on the field.
Sanjay Patel, the competition’s director, will present the final playing regulations to the board for approval in November, when the competition is now certain to be given the final go ahead. The ECB has applied to trademark the Hundred brand and The Sunday Telegraph understands that talks have been held with at least one other franchise tournament to gauge interest in copying the proposal.
But while the cricketing side of the new tournament is looking much clearer – in fact, looking very much like Twenty20 – the real hard work starts now. The Hundred will launch in 2020 but first a series of deals will have to be finalised with the counties and those negotiations will be tense with inevitable stumbling blocks. The eight staging venues, the Test match grounds, were announced in February but they are still waiting for contracts. Patience is running out.
The Hundred will create a second, new tier of professional cricket in England. Players will be taken out of the county system. Will counties be loaned back players drafted by the new franchises but not picked? How much will the players be paid? When will the draft take place? These are all issues that the ECB tackles next.
But perhaps the biggest obstacle, and one no major sport has recently tried to clear in this country, is how to persuade the British public to identify with newly-created teams. The ECB believes times have changed. It thinks the public are ready to look beyond identities if they are provided with a good match-day experience, at a reasonable cost and are entertained. In Australia, it did not take long for the Big Bash teams to build up substantial supporter bases.
The marketing spend by the ECB will be the biggest in its history at about £6 million annually. Will this come at the expense of promoting Test cricket, a format in danger of marginalisation by the new tournament? Will the Vitality Blast, which has again enjoyed a bumper summer, receive extra funding? These are questions the counties want answered. Progress will provide the background to the World Cup and Ashes in 2019.
The Hundred remains a sensitive subject. Few, if any, are willing to speak on the record about it on either side of the argument. “The cricket was always going to be fun,” said one county source. “But it feels many months have been wasted sorting out the difference between the Hundred and Twenty20 when we want to see progress on other matters.”
The 18 county chairmen and the MCC will receive an update on the Hundred at a meeting at the Oval on Thursday but it will not be the main topic of conversation. The chairmen will instead rubber-stamp proposals to tweak the county structure from 2020 to include a new top division of 10 teams (second of eight) in the championship. The 50-over competition will be played during the Hundred and counties will keep their seven home matches in the Blast.
There is one more trial match next week at Loughborough University involving the England women. The idea of penalising wides with a free hit will be tested but mostly it will be a run through of what the board hopes the new format will look like in 2020. The aspects that worked last week such as tactical timeouts, blocks of 10 balls from one end, fielding substitutes and powerplays will be grooved.
Trent Woodhill, the Australian Twenty20 expert who has worked with franchises around the world, helped modify some of the whackier ideas and is confident there is now the right blend between skill and strategy. Crucially, he believes it will improve the skills of English players, particularly the latest idea to punish wides with a free hit.
There is also a sense the Hundred will bring bowlers back into games. They will be fresher because they are not having to run around changing fielding position after six balls, and indeed may be subbed off by one of the two fielding substitutes, keeping them fresher for bowling. One of the fielding substitutes could include a specialist wicketkeeper, perhaps reviving the days of keepers picked for their glovework rather than just for hitting sixes.
Feedback from umpires was considered valuable because they have a more neutral viewpoint. One idea they have offered is for the crowd to keep any balls hit into the stands, a little like baseball, with the umpires carrying nine or 10 spares.
The tactical timeout was the biggest success. Teams will be given 2½-minute time-outs between balls 25 and 75, when coaches can call the players together and change tactics. This could be televised, with coaches wearing microphones to put the viewer in the huddle. Matches will be over in 135 minutes.
Twenty20 is called crash, bang, wallop. In the Hundred there will only be time for crash and bang.