Stokes Supercharged and Woakes plays ball as the Hundred takes flight
“We’re in east London, it’s a new competition, and there’s a 43-year-old ECB guy wearing jeans,” says Rob Calder, by way of building anticipation. Calder is the commercial director of the Hundred, a tournament the ECB hopes will revolutionise the audience for cricket. He is in Brick Lane to announce the “brand identities” of the teams taking part. And his video presentation keeps cutting out.
“How about you all come back the same time next week”, Calder jokes to a room full of journalists not overly inclined to play along. The Hundred has, it seems fair to say, gone down like a cold cup of sick with a lot of people who have a stake in the game of cricket. The counties do not like it, the fanbase does not like it and the press has its collective eyebrows raised so high they are practically leaping off their face. That Calder cannot get a carefully assembled montage of Ben Stokes in his Northern Superchargers kit to work seems about right.
Stokes is one of eight centrally contracted England players who will be the figureheads for the new citybased teams created especially for the competition. The Superchargers, who are based in Leeds but not associated with Yorkshire, picked Stokes while the Southern Brave (singular), who will play at the Ageas Bowl but have nothing to do with Hampshire, chose Jofra Archer. Each team have also picked two “local heroes”, players who play for the counties that fall under the catchment area of the cities. If that sounds complicated, wait till you get to the bit where they are making the overs 10 balls long.
Why create a new competition when England are one-day world champions and attendances at this summer’s Vitality T20 Blast were the best they have ever been? It seems like change for change’s sake to many people, but listen to the players and they are rather up for this Hundred lark. Well, they would be wouldn’t they, goes the response, with the top picks in the full draft taking place later this month set to earn £125,000 for five weeks’ work. But even applying the keenest of scrutiny it is hard to detect disingenuousness from the players who have signed up.
Take Chris Woakes, England allrounder, and the “red ball” (centrally contracted) pick of Birmingham Phoenix, the Edgbaston-based team who presumably did not take their name from the disastrous MG Rover takeover gang. Sitting in his New Balance-designed team shirt of peach and orange – and featuring the logo of Butterkist popcorn (KP snacks signed a deal to sponsor all the teams, with not a gambling logo in sight) – he was eager to act as ambassador for the format.
“I think the brightness of the kit goes with the tournament”, he said. “It’s something new and I hope it helps to attract not just a new audience, but young kids and families to come to the venues and enjoy the competition.
“It’s going to take a bit of bedding in and it will be interesting to see how teams go about it, but with 100 balls I think it’s going to be high scoring. It really will be. I’m excited about it all. I like the Hundred as a concept and I’m pleased to be a part of it.
“We’ve got new people interested in the sport after the summer we’ve had with the World Cup and the Ashes. I think the Hundred is the best way to capitalise on that. It’s fast, it’s got the best players competing against each other, it’s on free-to-air television. I think that’s a huge one. I fell in love with the game through watching free to air television so hopefully that will be the same.”
The Hundred will feature men’s and women’s competitions running concurrently next summer. The BBC will show 10 of the men’s 36 matches live though the England and Wales Cricket Board expects the national broadcaster to wholeheartedly embrace all of the Hundred, including on its social media channels. That – along with the loud kits, the summer holiday scheduling and the shortened, metric format – gives the lie to what this is really all about. For all the disapproval of cricket’s current stakeholders, if the Hundred makes more children like cricket then it will be job done.