HIT OR MISS FOR THE HUNDRED?
THE VERDICT ON CRICKET’S LATEST VENTURE:
MY ISSUE is not so much with the format – The Hundred is essentially Twenty20 cricket with a few gimmicky bits and pieces such as five-ball overs – but the damage its introduction has done elsewhere.
I don’t like a season where the prime months of June, July and August are dominated by the short-form version.
England are having to make changes to the Test team during the India series but the potential replacements are ill-equipped to be at their best because they are out of the rhythm of playing red-ball cricket.
In the past, players outside the Test XI would be in the groove through playing some long-form cricket.
England have effectively yielded home advantage.
We’re lucky at the moment that the best cricketers – Virat Kohli, Joe Root, Ben Stokes, Kane Williamson – all really value Test cricket, but if we maintain this sort of schedule in the long run I can see the next generation taking a different view.
Any gifted, reasonably intelligent young cricketer would look at what was on offer and work out that the best chance of earning a good living would be through being able to smack 30 in a dozen deliveries or bowl 20 balls without conceding more than 25 runs.
As well as the damage to Test cricket, we could end up down the line at a 50-over World Cup with none of England’s best players having played any 50-over cricket for their clubs because they have Hundred contracts.
It’s amazing what you can do if you pour in a lot of resources and put some matches on free-to-air television.
But, domestically, the T20 Blast will be damaged if all the energy is going into The Hundred.
The season just cannot accommodate four different types of cricket, two of which are short form.
The Hundred has also left vast swathes of the country devoid of much cricket.
I try not to get too parochial about this but one of the joys of English cricket is that the smaller, non-urban clubs have been pretty successful.
Essex and Somerset have been the best two sides for the past few years and they have a very loyal support base.
At Taunton, I suspect The Hundred has passed everyone by because no one is moved to get into their car and drive to another country to watch Welsh Fire.