Simon Heffer This will both alienate fans and fail to attract a new audience

Since the Hundred isn’t by most people’s definition actually cricket, then it doesn’t really matter what the features of this mindless slogathon are called.

The England and Wales Cricket Board seems to think the term “wickets” causes grave intellectual difficulty to large tranches of the non-cricket going public that they are hoping to attract. I wonder how much was spent on that bit of rebranding expertise?

But you do not entice people into a cricket ground and make them part with handsome amounts of money just because you change the name of an important aspect of the game. To those who know nothing about cricket – an important constituency that the ECB wishes to attract – what a dismissal is called makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.

However, it does make a difference to those who do know about cricket, and whose alienation from the sport this confected form of the game is already near to achieving. Their anger and sense of estrangement will simply grow, other such nonsense will simply help ensure they are turned off the Hundred for good, and start to feel less attracted to cricket generally.

“Batters” is a repellent term that reminds people of a fish and chip shop, or the mixture with which to make Yorkshire pudding.

The term “balls” has not yet been scrapped which, given the absurdity of this format and the attitude the ECB is taking towards those they hope will watch it, is probably just as well.

On one level, what is being proposed may appear to be only a minor matter of terminology, but it is, in fact, another severance of this new type of game from everything else. It is all part of the creation of a whole new activity that just happens to have people playing it who at other times earn their livings being cricketers.

Before too long, the Hundred will become just another moneymaking activity that happens at cricket grounds to keep the infrastructure functioning, such as selling beer or hospitality boxes, or using cricket grounds to host rock concerts or car boot sales.

But the real damage that is done is because the people who play real cricket are being made into bigger mercenaries than some of them already are to play in this absolute circus. There are to be no county or geographical loyalties either; the skills needed to play serious cricket will be further prostituted; and some players who would normally turn out for higher forms of cricket will make this variant of the game their chief priority, for financial reasons. First-class cricket is already a serious casualty of this

To those who know nothing about cricket, what a dismissal is called makes no difference