A Hundred problems

Or, how i've spent the whole of August watching something I despise.

Complaining about The Hundred is on a par with singing ‘fuck the Tories’ at Glastonbury or quipping “some summer we’re having” whilst cowering under a bus shelter in June. It might be true, it’s almost certainly valid, but it adds nothing of value.

I don’t like The Hundred. Or rather, I don’t like what The Hundred tells us about our game and our nation. However, instead of just whingeing on, i’m going to outline some specifics where The Crisp Cup lets itself down and what I - a miserable middle-aged man who hates the product - thinks can be done to improve it.

To do this, I have embarked on a journey of great personal development and strife, for I have watched almost every single televised (men’s) game this August, as well as one women’s game which I sort of had on in the background, for a bit. Being pragmatic, The Hundred is the only regularly promoted and televised cricket we’re going to get and so much capital has been plunged into it that it’s not going anywhere for the time being. So, we must come to terms with the beast in our backyard.

Let us start with the things that aren’t really that bad and which I have little objection towards, namely: the cricket and the TV scheduling.

You would have to be very churlish indeed to argue there isn’t good cricket played in The Hundred and this year there does seem to be more decent players. A couple of the Saffer big-hitters in Klaasen and Miller, all the England Bazballers for whom the tournament seems tailor-made, a whole host of Kiwis who all seem to play for Birmingham Phoenix and even our friends from Down Under, Messers Smith and Warner who must wonder when English crowds will stop reminding them they cried on the telly (they will never stop doing this). The cricket has been good to watch, with some big run chases knocked off fairly easily on the modern, placid English wicket. Bowlers “executing their skills” to use the dreaded vernacular and a high standard of fielding on display. Nothing to complain about there. This part is fine. Whether it should be compressed into 16.4 overs is another thing entirely.

The other feature that I really do like about The Hundred is paradoxically the thing that I hate it most for, so my even-handed appraisal of its positive qualities will quickly give way to rancour. Every night since the end of the India test series (3rd August) there has been a cricket match on TV between 19:00 and 21:00. Every night. The vintage summer we’ve had has meant that almost no games have been lost to rain, even in Manchester, so August has been a month of guaranteed, reasonably good hit & giggle cricket available to watch nightly. Against my better judgement, I have rather enjoyed this, and even though I hold no affinity for any of the teams, it’s been good to switch on the TV and know that there will be some cricket to watch, and after this Sunday’s grand-super-mega final (or whatever they call it) when the slop stops, I will miss this.

However.

The worst thing, by far about The Hundred is the fact that it has colonised August. August is purpose built for test cricket, as if Allah the Most Merciful said ‘let there be a month where the air is humid, all the children are off school and it’s still light until 9pm so they can watch cricket during the day and play it in the evening’. There should be no debate about this, lest anyone expose themselves as a moron. August is for test cricket, long sumptuous lazy days of test cricket. And that has been taken from us.

It’s an inane and patronising argument put forth to suppose that children cannot be drawn to test cricket on its own merits, that:

a) The Hundred exists for getting children into cricket, therefore
b) we have to block out the school holidays especially for it but
c) we also think test cricket is the pinnacle, however
d) they won’t be able to watch that same pinnacle, during those same holidays.

If you have confidence in the product, which all the administrators claim they do, then let test cricket market itself at a time when kids will actually be at home to tune in and can spend time watching it. By moving test cricket out in favour of two hundred balls of primo slop, we are exposing children to a self-fulfilling prophecy that they won’t and can’t appreciate the premier form of the game.

This summer has been the 20 year anniversary of the 2005 Ashes, a contest that didn’t start until the end of July and ran through to early September. The second, third and fourth tests all took place in the school summer holidays. Ignoring the fact it was on free-to-air TV, would the audience figures have been so astronomical had it all been wrapped up before the schools were out? I don’t think so.

The Two-Day Test of 2000 (Andy Caddick 4 wickets in an over) took place on August 18th, Ben Stokes taking down the Aussies at Headingley 2019 unfolded over a sweltering late summer Bank Holiday weekend. So many more memories of hazy (or not) August days of test cricket. That’s over now, it will never happen again. There is no test match cricket in August, for August is the month of The Hundred. This to me feels the most capital crime, the one that just cannot be explained away by any amount of ‘growing the game’ or ‘increasing revenue’ apologia. No-one’s favourite form of cricket is The Hundred. At least not yet.

Aside from taking August hostage, my other major gripe is the utterly contrived nature of the teams. Inner City Franchises were the boogeyman hanging over the tournament from its inception:

Q: “How else can we get Pakistani kids in Balsall Heath to actually come to the cricket?”

A: “Let’s invent a completely new team that plays in the same stadium, but it’s different somehow”

Q: “Will it work?”

A: “I don’t know but lets throw hundreds of millions of pounds at it to find out”

One look at the crowds will tell you it hasn’t. The demographics for The Hundred are largely the demographics for the T20 Blast. Mostly white, largely families. There hasn’t been a sudden influx of MLE speakers in du-rags at The Oval although I did see children wearing baseball caps in the Members seats at Lord’s, as sure a sign of the end times as one can imagine.

I’m sure there is probably data to show that first time audiences, families, have come through the gates and that’s great and well, but its maddening how many will have been indirectly turned away. If you’re from Manchester, Birmingham Leeds or London you have a proxy team to support immediately, but if you’re from the West Country there is no chance at all that you will be driving to Cardiff to support an entity called “Welsh Fire” so you no longer have a team for a month. Similarly, are cricket fans in the North East driving to Leeds to cheer for the “Northern Superchargers”? We know very well that they’re not. The dubiousness of supporting a team with an adjective in its name aside (“Southern Brave” perplexingly has two), the fact is many cricket fans in the country have been abandoned in pursuit of mythical new fans that may or may not (generally the latter) get persuaded by crisps, fireworks and DJ UmBongo Ft. MC Kristy Creme on the decks at the change of innings. What vehicle is there for young kids from Worcester, Bristol, Durham or Plymouth to climb aboard? Is cricket the only sport engaged in deliberately isolating a huge percentage of its existing fans? It seems so.

Which leads nicely to the last point of this melancholy tale, the needless reinvention of the rules of cricket which have served quite well for the past hundred years or so. Six ball overs have been the rule (In England at least) since the move away from five ball overs in 1900. I somewhat doubt that The Hundred organisers have made a conscious decision to RETVRN, instead deciding that five is an easier number to explain to non-cricket fans, which is the entire point of the thing, a cricket tournament for people who don’t watch cricket. Not even in 1900 were players able to elect to bowl ten balls on the trot - a rule available in The Hundred but from my observations this summer, rarely employed. So what’s the point of it? Innovation for innovations sake tends to only produce annoyance.

The double-header nature of the tournament where women and men play on the same day, consecutively, is unarguably giving the women’s game more exposure - but because the boundaries aren’t altered between matches some of the biggest hitters in world cricket are playing on grounds with boundaries little bigger than an U-15 game. If men and women deserve equal pay then they should have equal boundaries - but not like that. Shortening outfields have been creeping in to white ball cricket for years but to turn The Oval, probably the most ‘Australian’ ground in England, into a village green demeans and cheapens the quality of the cricket on display. Just move the bloody rope.

At the start I promised solutions, and there is a glaringly obvious one readily available. It’s called the T20 Blast. It already exists. It involves teams that most everyone in the country can support and it is actually pretty good. We invented T20 cricket but have ceded the ground to the IPL, the Big Bash and even the new American league. So why throw toys out of the pram and try and reinvent the already reinvented wheel? Just make the Blast better. It really is that simple. Oh, and ban the phrase ‘Meerkat Match Hero’ and burn the stupid hat.