ON Dané van Niekerk’s bat THICK OUTSIDE Edge flies the ball past the wicket keeper to score the winning runs and finishes the opening game of cricket’s newest game, The Hundred. The women’s Oval Invincibles team beat the Manchester Originals by five wickets (the men faced each other the next day). Fans roar, fire towers blaze; Pop music belts out. One viewer turns to your correspondent and says, “I always thought ‘fun’ and ‘cricket’ were a contradiction in terms.
Such feelings should cheer Sanjay Patel, Chief Commercial Officer of the English & Welsh Cricket Board (ECB). It has been almost four years since the former strategist for Heineken, a warehouse brand, brought up England’s cricket bosses with the idea of a 100-ball-per-innings game that could be played in two and a half hours.
Cricket seems designed to withstand such modernization. Its rules are strict on the spirit of fair play, but comparatively silent on matters that you might find central, such as the size of the playing field. If you’ve never played yourself, try to spot a leg before wicket (LBW) that “dislots” a batsman if his body is believed to have prevented the ball from hitting the stumps.
Such quirks please lovers, but make the game -pear aristocratic and incomprehensible to everyone else. 30 million sports fans in England and Wales do not follow cricket, according to Sport England, an official body. Of the 1.1 million who played a game between 2015 and 2018, 94% were white, 82% were male, and 65% were in higher income groups. Their average age was 50 years.
It was data that Mr. Patel used in planning a path to wider popularity. Three-quarters of fans, he found, were delighted before they turned 16, and while South Asians made up only 3% of ticket sales, they made up 30% of recreational gamblers. The Hundred was therefore developed to -peal to youthful and subcontinental sensibilities. It’s shorter than the District Championship games (which last four days) and the One-Day Cup games (which last eight hours). While in all other formats bowlers throw six balls at the same time (known as “over”) to one of two batsmen, in the Hundred Bowl the bowlers throw ten sets of ten balls. Overseas players have been recruited and time outs have been loaned from the Indian Premier League.
In some ways, the new format is similar to Twenty20 (T20), a three-hour format introduced by the ECB in 2003. However, it has more commercial -peal. The and Sky broadcast games in the UK; Global agreements have also been made. Music Introducing, a talent spotting arm of the national broadcaster, provides artists and DJs. Greg James, a presenter on Radio 1, explains the rules. Lego, a toy manufacturer, has created an animated trailer; Topps, who sells cards for children’s trading games, has released a series of hundreds.
The biggest change, however, is that The Hundred isn’t played by the 18 historic county clubs, but rather by eight new franchises owned by the ECB. All are based in cities. Critics believe they will play a parasitic role in the cricket ecosystem. Andy Nash, a former Somerset chairman, says the new franchises will piggyback the counties on training and that the new format could divide the game and make it bankrupt.
But others focus on the opportunity to bring cricket to potential fans. Warwickshire County Cricket Club is now home to the Birmingham Phoenix team from The Hundred. The city has a large ethnic Pakistani population. Few young people feel attached to the county that Birmingham no longer belongs to, says Craig Flindall, chief operating officer. He hopes players like Moeen Ali (who normally plays for Worcestershire) and Abtaha Maqsood (a Scot who wears a hijab) win.
The ECB spent £ 40 million ($ 56 million) on the opening tournament, three-fifths of which went to staff, venues, etc. A profit of £ 10 million is expected. More than 8 million viewers tuned in, 3.3 million of whom hadn’t seen any other ECB cricket this year, and nearly 500,000 tickets have been sold so far, 83% of the tickets available. Each county (and Marylebone Cricket Club) has a 19th stake in the format. If an investor wanted to buy a team, everyone would benefit. ■
This article -peared in the UK section of the print edition under the heading “Bowl fast and break things”
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