Opinion
Not long after Twenty20 cricket first reared its shiny head to the cricket world back in the noughties, a wise old friend said, “I promise you, they won’t rest until they’ve invented the One1.”
His concept was simple: two teams both face a single ball each and whichever side scores more runs off their one delivery wins the match.
With ten minutes for the change of innings, the whole thing could be done in a quarter of an hour.
It’s ludicrous of course, but I’ve thought back to that amusing idea many times over the years, especially as we’ve seen various truncated forms of cricket become more prevalent.
I thought of it again last year as the English cricket authorities appeared ready to launch The Hundred. Here we go again, I thought, working our way down to one ball each.
Then came the false start thanks to COVID-19, which meant the hypothesising and navel-gazing about The Hundred went on even longer.
Cricket angst was slowly rising as fans worldwide questioned whether we needed another version of the game? This was countered by the prospect that it might be really good.
We had to hold out until this year to watch it actually happen, and the wait, it seems, was worth it.
Despite my sincere hopes to the contrary, the double-header final at Lord’s was both excellent cricket and entertaining. In case you missed it, the Southern Brave won the men’s Hundred competition over the Birmingham Phoenix, while the Oval Invincibles won the women’s title against the Southern Brave (I have no idea who the teams are either).
(Photo by Stu Forster-IDI/IDI via Getty Images)
But it’s watchable, somehow.
If you thought T20 was cricket on steroids, think of the The Hundred as cricket drinking beers and making balloon animals at the same time. It’s full-on alpha cricket, no doubt, but with a feel-good vibe.
Most importantly for England cricket’s governing body, it added some important marketability in a summer dominated by Euro 2020, Wimbledon and, to a lesser extent, the Tokyo Olympics.
The two-Test series against New Zealand, or the old reliable County Championship, certainly weren’t able to compete with those sorts of events – nor did the final of the World Test Championship, as it didn’t involve the home team. Even the current England series against cricketing giants India has taken a while to get started (that may be due to Rory Burns and Dom Sibley’s soporific batting though, of course).
In comparison, The Hundred seems energetic and fresh, like the early days of the Big Bash here in Australia. Accompanied by the hyperbolic commentary of Kevin Pietersen and Shane Warne, and intensely confusing on-screen graphics, over 16 million domestic viewers watched the tournament on TV.
(Photo by Hamish Blair/Getty Images)
Research by the ECB showed that 55 per cent of people who bought tickets had never paid to go to a cricket match in England before.
Statistics like that will get noticed by overseas administrators desperate to boost youth participation rates and TV viewership. My fear is that The Hundred will therefore lead to more format variety in the future.
At the moment, the competition is an English cricket product, but what’s to say that new Hundred-like competitions won’t sprout up internationally?
At the very least, we can expect some of the competition’s time-saving innovations will be adopted. Ironically, that may make things more confusing for cricket fans before it makes things clearer.
What happens, for instance, if the T20 gold standard, the Indian Premier League, decides to move to five-ball overs? Does international cricket then stick with ‘traditional’ T20 and run the risk of going out of date overnight? Presumably there is not room for four different international versions of cricket.
I’m also concerned that more tinkering with formats will confuse cricketers even further. Australia’s best multi-format bowlers are suffering from this problem already. The recent T20 campaigns in Bangladesh and the Caribbean saw Mitch Starc and Josh Hazlewood bowl few slower balls in comparison to the opposition.
It’s understandable. How can they expect to be precise in their unpredictability if they spend half the year practising reliability?
There are benefits that should be taken seriously though.
The men’s and women’s double-header format was huge in enticing big crowds to women’s cricket. The organisers are already promising boosted women’s salaries for next year’s tournament.
Either way, The Hundred will be significant for cricket’s future. The fact that it’s taken so long for the inaugural season to take place has not lessened its impact.
The competition has been a clear success, and in pandemic times, that’s earned my respect. But the question remains: where do we all go from here?
Build your own fantasy cricket team and put it to the test with Draftstars daily fantasy competitions. Pick your match, pick your team and watch the points roll in to take out cash prizes on each match. What are you really gambling with? Set a deposit limit.
Harshal Patel was not a happy man!
David Lord has been remembered as an icon of Australian sports journalism following his death, aged 84. The renowned writer and broadcaster was an…
Sign the man up for a contract next season!
RCB have suffered a massive HEAD-ACHE after Travis Head smashed the fastest century by an SRH player in just 39 balls, as they amassed…
A brutal century by Travis Head has blasted Sunrisers Hyderabad back into the Indian Premier League play-off places in another match for bowlers to…
Two Aussies abroad have endured wildly different fortunes as Jake Fraser-McGurk joined the world stage with a thrilling first IPL half century, but Scott…
