How the Hundred raised bar in second year
More overseas players and growing number of professionals led to higher quality cricket and bigger audiences, writes Tim Wigmore
If second-season syndrome was inescapable in this year’s men’s Hundred, it happily eluded the women’s competition. Despite the tournament being trimmed by the Commonwealth Games, this year’s women’s Hundred could claim to have bested last year’s.
With a higher calibre of overseas players, the quality of cricket improved. Even with 10 fewer matches the salient metrics were positive, too: compared to 2021, this year’s women’s
competition saw more sixes. Most importantly, more fans came to watch: 271,000 all told, an average of 10,400 per game.
Perhaps the best indication of the evolution of the Hundred came in the final: not on the pitch, but off it. For Oval Invincibles, Dane van Niekerk, the official team captain and player of the match in last year’s final, watched on from the sidelines: not because she was injured, but because she did not get into the side. Van Niekerk was a victim of a change in the rules on overseas players. As with last year, sides could only field three overseas players in their XI, but they could now contract four at a time, meaning that a once illustrious international player would now miss out.
In the Invincibles’ case it meant Van Niekerk, South Africa’s captain and a veteran of 194 internationals, only made the cut in three matches.
In the men’s competition, the Hundred’s claims about the calibre of overseas players are a little exaggerated, with the quality hollowed out by a combination of the crammed international calendar, India barring their players from appearing in overseas short-format leagues and several players leaving early to take part in the Caribbean Premier League. But in the women’s tournament, the credentials of the Hundred’s overseas players are harder to dispute. Barring Meg Lanning, who missed the tournament for personal reasons, and perhaps India’s prodigy Shafali Verma, the Hundred essentially featured all of the best two dozen non-english cricketers in the world.
“It gave coaches options,” Sanjay Patel, the managing director of the Hundred, says of allowing a fourth overseas player in the squad.
Yet the greater quality of overseas players in 2022, due to the proximity of the Commonwealth
Games and the easing of Covid-19 quarantine requirements, did not mean local talent was marginalised. The share of overall runs scored by overseas players this year rose three per cent, but the share of wickets overseas players took fell by the same amount, suggesting that domestic players coped with the heightened standards. A central reason for this is at the level below the Hundred: in the regional women’s structure, there are now 51 professional contracts, taking the total number of English professional players to 67 – enough, along with three overseas players, to fill all eight Hundred sides.
“The domestic players are getting better each year because they’re now part of professional domestic structures,” says Charlotte Edwards, the former England captain who is now head coach of Southern Brave. “I’ve certainly seen a difference from last year – the fitness levels and fielding have really risen.”
Two 17-year-olds – Sophia Smale and Freya Kemp – faced off against each other in this month’s final at Lord’s. The competition also reaffirmed 18-year-old Alice Capsey’s standing as among the most exciting cricketers of her generation. While Edwards does not consider the standard of domestic talent on a par with the Big Bash – which has benefitted from Australia’s world-leading investment in the women’s game – she believes that the gap is closing.
The most dramatic moment of this year’s women’s Hundred came when Nat Sciver launched three consecutive sixes over midwicket in the eliminator, coming within one blow of clinching victory when Trent Rockets needed 22 to win from four balls.
It was an extreme example of the welcome uptick in sixes this year – from one every 71 balls to one every 50. This shift could lead to an important change in the dimensions at grounds.
An altogether bigger issue, however, is how to protect the competitive balance in the women’s Hundred. Both finals have involved the same result – Oval Invincibles defeating Southern Brave in the final – while Welsh Fire have only won three of their 14 games.
Inadvertently, the contract system used in the women’s tournament might well have undermined competitive balance. Unlike with the draft used in the men’s competition, in the women’s Hundred non-centrally contracted players are free to sign for whoever they want. In practice, players have tended to want to be based at home, benefitting the sides who have the strongest pool of local players. But Patel suggests that, with domestic players paid better, it could enable a move towards a draft system to ensure talent is equitably distributed. “The overall professionalisation of the women’s game means that some of these things which probably weren’t possible back in 2019 when we made the decisions, I think are possible,” he says. If the quality of the women’s tournament can increase, the ultimate hope is that more women’s matches might take top billing during doubleheaders. This year, the lone women’s match to be played after the men’s game was the tournament opener. “Double-headers will definitely stay. That’s a good model,” Patel says. “We flipped one game – we need to review that and see what did that do? What were the results, what do we think’s best for the women’s game?” To Patel, the only certainty is that further evolution lies ahead. “The women’s game is changing – and I think we should change with it.”