“This is a fresh and exciting idea which will appeal to a younger audience and attract new fans to the game” - ECB chief executive Tom Harrison
After three years of buildup and drama, The Hundred is here. With the 100-ball format, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) have made a ballsy dive into the unknown. Being played in both men’s and women’s categories, the eight sides involved are Birmingham Phoenix, London Spirit, Manchester Originals, Northern Superchargers, Oval Invincibles, Southern Brave, Trent Rockets, and Welsh Fire.
Aiming to make cricket simpler and appealing to one and all, the ECB announced the set of rules and playing conditions for The Hundred – toss taking place on a DJ stand, a 25-ball powerplay, white cards, abolishing the term ‘overs’ and penalty for being behind the ‘over’-rate among them. It was over for ‘overs’ as the ECB decided to make ‘balls’ the fundamental unit, referring to the old cliché that every ball counts. An inning is divided into twenty sets of ‘fives’, but a bowler is not limited to one five, and they can bowl ten balls on the trot, bowling a maximum of 20 balls per game.
The umpire’s call has been replaced with ‘too close to call’, a suitable metaphor for the format itself. As T20s take more than three-and-half hours, a Hundred match is limited to a maximum of two-and-half hours. The change in ends takes place only after every ten balls and not every five balls. At the end of a five-ball set, the umpire calls ‘five’ rather than ‘over’ and raises a white card so that there's no confusion if a bowler bowls ten successive balls from the same end. And who doesn’t like the prospect of in-game repercussions for slow over-rates? A team needs to bring one extra fielder inside the 30-yard circle from the point of transgression! Every second counts too.
Usually, as the balls decrease in a format, the odds incline much more on the batter’s side. But, barring the two-run penalty for a no-ball – which has been a part of the Vitality Blast – most rules favour the bowlers, the marginalized participants in limited-over cricket, and this is what sets the Hundred apart. In the first half of the group stage, the average score has been roughly 138 for the men's and 127 for the women’s – the rough equivalents of 166 and 152 in T20, respectively. Only Jemimah Rodrigues has come close to scoring a century. The powerplay is only 25% of the innings against the 30% in a T20. Allowing a bowler to bowl ten balls on the trot is a flexibility that balances many odds in their favour. Rashid Khan went as far as to say that this is a chance for taking three hat-tricks!
Imagine MS Dhoni bowling Deepak Chahar’s quota out in the powerplay or Rohit Sharma keeping all of Jasprit Bumrah's balls for the death. Imagine Virat Kohli walks in, and captains can have their leg spinner bowling 10% of the innings then and there. And even if batters play out the fifth ball, they are on strike for the start of the next five while the bowler doesn't have to nominate a ‘ten’ at the start. When a batter is caught, the new batter takes strike even if the batters cross. The format breaks the templates that T20 cricket has fallen into, and this isn’t bad.
In line with the gender-neutral ambition of the tournament, the terms ‘batsman’ and ‘batswoman’ were replaced by 'batter'. With games staged just before the men’s and equality of exposure, women’s cricket has been a clear beneficiary of The Hundred. Yes, the ECB has offered equal prize money and promoted both tournaments equally, but it is still far from being equal. The highest-paid woman takes home less than the lowest-paid man – men’s pay brackets range from £24,000 to £100,000 against the £3,600 to £15,000 for the women.
But at least women’s cricket has been prioritized. The matches have proved that when the same exposure is given to both men and women, the gap in quality between them reduces at once. Jemimah Rodrigues’s 92* has done for the format that Brendon McCullum’s 158* did for IPL and Harmanpreet Kaur’s 171* did for women’s cricket four years ago. With free-to-air matches and YouTube streaming, it has been evident that to watch women’s cricket, people simply need access to it. The Hundred's first fixture became the most-watched women's cricket match in the UK, reaching a peak audience of 1.95m across BBC and Sky with 1.6m of those on the free-to-air BBC.
The graphics and the changes might feel drastic for ardent fans as we are used to watching cricket in a certain way, but this won’t concern the new audience, and ardent fans don’t abhor change when the quality of cricket doesn’t change. It’s the feeling of cricket boiled down to its purest form that matters. Close thrillers, Alex Hales-Jemimah Rodrigues specials, Dane van Niekerk’s leadership and all-round show, Liam Livingstone hitting the ball far, Parkinson spinning deliveries from outside leg to the top of off, the fearlessness of a 16-year-old schoolgirl Alice Capsey, the finds of Chris Benjamin and Harry Brook, and Bairstow being Bairstow. The cricket has been top-notch.
Even with T20s, Tests have remained the sacrosanct format of the sport. Surely ICC won’t infuse a 100-ball format into international cricket, but other leagues could also follow this template of having a simultaneous men’s and women’s tournament – the IPL particularly. The BBL officials are already keen on shortening the duration of a match and implementing the slow over-rate rule. Many other innovations might be adapted into the existing formats. Stressing on the bid for cricket’s potential Olympic entry, The Hundred has shown that the economics of broadcasting require changes for quality cricket globally instead of one being played by some commonwealth nations.
Ravi Ashwin said on his channel, “To many, innovation is not encouraged and is often misunderstood. When someone films a movie, we should watch it in the theatre and then criticize it.” The first season of The Hundred concludes on August 21. It might become a curious footnote in the rich history of the sport, like Cricket Max, aluminium bats and underarm bowling, or it could be another IPL and revolutionize cricket forever. Short-form cricket’s greatest contribution is democratizing the sport. From Global T20 Canada to Minor League Cricket in the USA to European Cricket Series, the rise of the sport has been seen with Afghanistan and even Hong Kong attracting packed crowds in their leagues. The Hundred is here just to make the game grow and inspire the next generation. And fret not, cricket isn’t just going to change overnight, and neither will the fans.
Written by:Kaushal Baid