Cricket: good riddance to the Hundred?
Unsurprisingly, many footballers aren’t thrilled by the possibility of putting themselves and their families at risk, said Matt Slater on The Athletic. But the real resistance is said to be coming from the bottom six clubs, because if the season is resumed, three of them will be relegated. And who can blame them for putting up a fight, said Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail. They’re the ones with the most to lose. If the season never restarts, Liverpool – who are currently 25 points clear at the top of the table – won’t win the title by normal means, but they will still be crowned champions “with an asterisk”. Some of the other big
The coronavirus crisis has forced the postponement of some of the biggest competitions in world sport, said Matt Roller on ESPNcricinfo: the Olympics, Euro 2020, Wimbledon. But what’s striking about the decision to delay the launch of the Hundred, the new competition from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), is that it has been actively cheered by many cricket fans. Ever since the tournament was first proposed, in 2016, many have questioned the point of introducing a new 100-ball format, when it is so similar to the 120-ball Twenty20 format. But the ECB was convinced that this was the best way to open up the sport to a “broader audience” – and since playing behind closed doors “directly contradicts” that aim, it has decided to wait until next year. It’s hoping that international cricket and the T20 Blast, which features county sides, can still go ahead this summer.
But there is simply too much at stake to wait much longer, said Sam Wallace in The Sunday Telegraph. If the season does not resume, then the clubs will reportedly lose £1.137bn between them. That would then affect the £140m in “solidarity money” that flows down each year from the Premier League to the lower leagues. And even if the league did decide to delay another few months, it would make little difference, said Jonathan Wilson in The Observer. Who knows how long it will take before matches can be played in front of big crowds? “If football isn’t prepared to return, at least initially, in a form very different to the one it took before the virus, it may not return for a very long time – and for many clubs that means never.”
An awful lot was riding on this competition, said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. For many players, it would have provided “a huge part of their income”, for just four weeks’ work. And the venues that were set to host matches will lose out on as much as £3m each. That’s because there was genuine enthusiasm for the Hundred: 180,000 tickets were sold in just two weeks, “the best in the ECB’s history outside a global tournament”, and mostly to under40s and families, the very people cricket needs to attract. But there is simply no need for a new tournament, with eight brand new teams, said Paul Newman in the Daily Mail. The ECB already has “a jewel of a competition”: the T20 Blast, which is “highly popular”. That was always going to be “undermined” by the Hundred. So the ECB ought to consider this an opportunity: it should scrap the Hundred altogether, and concentrate its efforts on “a revamped T20 Blast”.