Half-Hearted and Crass: The Hundred at Lord’s and the Future of English Cricket

Sometimes it’s good to engage with things you don’t agree with. For example, it can be healthy to get some of your news from sources with an editorial policy that doesn’t necessarily reflect your opinions to avoid finding yourself in an echo chamber. Personally, I don’t wholeheartedly believe that free market capitalism is the answer to all the world’s problems, but I’m subscribed to The Economist. It’s good to have your point of view challenged; to see what the other side is thinking.

It was in this spirit that I attended the opening men’s match of the 2025 Hundred season at Lord’s[1]. I had previously sat firmly in the camp of those who are sceptical about this tournament, concerned about its impact on the wider season, and deeply worried by the auctioning of the height of English summer to the highest bidder. However, it felt right that I should approach this match with an open mind and a genuine desire to be converted.

I regret to inform you that there was no Damascene moment.

Having seen The Hundred live, I feel even more convinced that my simple but cynical view on why the ECB has chosen to gamble with the future of more established form of the game. Simply put, they are motivated by income from two sources: investment and licensing.

Investment has already been forthcoming following the sale of the ECB’s 49% equity in each of the eight franchises to international buyers, including US tech moguls and the Indian owners of IPL teams. The £520 million raised will be distributed across the 18 domestic counties, the MCC, and the recreational game. This one-off injection of cash, which will see the seven host counties and the MCC receive around £18m (and more for those who sold some or all of their own 51% equity in their franchises) and the 11 non-host counties receive in excess of £24m is likely to help many counties clear or reduce their heavy debt burdens.

Despite its development in the UK, the ECB failed to see the profit potential of T20 cricket and did not secure the intellectual property or licensing rights to the format. As the IPL has turned into a moneymaking machine and lucrative T20 leagues have sprung up worldwide, the ECB seems to have stewed over its unrealised income while the BCCI has raked in significant cash. Hence, The Hundred. Despite the sale of its equity in each of the eight franchises, and their associated IP, the ECB (sort of, see below) retains control over the tournament, its scheduling, and, critically, has trademarked the format in the UK and is seeking to do the same in other key cricket markets, including India, Australia, and New Zealand. Should The Hundred take off and attract international attention, the ECB hopes to secure significant, sustainable income by licensing the format and its branding to overseas boards.

But there are already plenty of reports suggesting that those who have invested in Hundred franchises, a group including the ownership of four IPL teams and the co-founder of Major League Cricket, may wish to switch from the hundred-ball model to T20 potentially as early as the 2026 season. This is important because, despite claims to have retained control of the tournament, the franchises hold 16 of the 20 votes on the tournament board which takes all major decisions on how The Hundred is run. Therefore, the ECB could soon have a fight on its hands to convince those investors that The Hundred has value as a standalone form of cricket that can become established outside the UK and secure them that much-wanted licensing revenue.

On the strength of 2025’s opening match, it feels like a fight they will lose.

The issue is not that The Hundred’s teams have been conjured out of nothing. All teams have to start somewhere and build a following. And in response to the argument that people don’t identify geographically with these franchises, one must remember that the domestic team that calls Lord’s home represents a county that officially ceased to exist in 1965. Middlesex is a different kind of London spirit – a geographical ghost that haunts a small north-west patch of the city that consumed it. That being said, the reported appetite of team owners, including the MCC and the so-called ‘Tech Titans’ who own the London Spirit, to change the names and colours of their franchises from 2026 onwards does suggest a lack of regard for the efforts to establish loyalty to the existing sides over the past few seasons. That two teams, those based at Old Trafford and The Oval, are mooted to become, respectively, Manchester Super Giants and MI London suggests that the push for The Hundred to become yet another global T20 league is well underway already.

The issue also isn’t necessarily with the creation of a new format. After all, cricket has seen 40-, 60-, and 50-over one day formats wax and wane over decades; overs consisted of four, then (pertinently) five, then of eight balls before being reduced – apparently for commercial, broadcast-related reasons - to six for the 1979/80 season; Tests used to be timeless; and the advent T20 caused a similar spike in the blood pressure of cricket purists to that seen following the announcement of The Hundred. Throughout its long history, cricket has been regularly tinkered with to optimise the marketability of the on-field product. Arguably, The Hundred is just the latest in a long line of innovations aimed at maximising interest, eyeballs, and cashflow.

The real issue is that, as stated, The Hundred feels like a pale imitation of the more glamorous Indian competition it seeks to emulate. The 2025 IPL featured an opening ceremony that felt like a Super Bowl half time show, in which Indian megastar Shreya Ghoshal performed a medley of hits accompanied by a full orchestra and crowds of dancers. The fireworks and light show rivalled Boston on 4^th July or the South Bank at New Year’s. At Lord’s, the fireworks were less impressive than the backyard display put on by that weird relative

A shrug-inducing display

who always invites you over for Bonfire Night. What little anticipation they managed to create was swiftly broken by the sight of two middle-aged umpires trundling to the middle through a thin cloud of smoke.

Everything feels half-hearted, a little sheepish, a bit naff. The IPL has cheerleaders, The Hundred has a bunch of uncoordinated children and a guy in a Compare the Market wombat costume flopping around on a stage. Sometimes it feels like those involved really don’t want to be there at all. The Lord’s announcer, whose voice exudes confidence and enthusiasm on Test days, sounds palpably embarrassed, like a little part of him is dying, as he counts down from ten and ends with an elongated ‘Booooom!’ to signal the start of each innings that carries more shame than it does excitement.

The efforts to create a sense of gravitas, of otherworldliness, about the players are scuppered by the fact that the fireworks that accompany each incoming batter as he makes his way onto the pitch would struggle to raise a collective shrug, let alone a gasp. They are further undermined by the fact that,

The end of another shrug-inducing display

cricket being what it is, players have to walk through the crowd in the pavilion to get back to their dressing room. It’s hard to see David Warner as some kind of sporting god when he accidentally knocks me on the head with his helmet as he walks past, or to think of Kane Williamson as an unapproachable athletic titan when he gives me a polite thank you for making way for him as he heads into the dressing room.

Back in 2021, there was a controversy over news that the ECB was considering calling wickets ‘outs’ on the basis that this change in terminology would make the game more accessible. The board soon confirmed that this would not, in fact, be the case. But, even in its backtracking, The Hundred is half-hearted. They might not be called ‘outs’, but they’re certainly not called wickets either. In fact, there seems to be a concerted effort not to mention the W-word at all. Wicketkeepers are just keepers, their specialism signified in the symbols used to describe the role of each player on the big screens with the letter K, not WK, a cartoon image of gloves, or the dagger symbol (†) used on traditional scorecards. When a batter is dismissed, it’s categorised as neither an out, nor a wicket. The method of dismissal flashes briefly on the big screens, but the real focus is on the incoming batter, the announcement of whom comes immediately and is accompanied by the aforementioned underwhelming fireworks and some upbeat entry music. There is no sense that the loss of a wicket could create jeopardy or tension, it is simply on to the next thing – more grist for the batting mill. Someone new to hew recklessly at the ball so a wombat can appear on screen and exhort the crowd to ‘raise a paw for a four’ and their Compare the Market-branded foam paws can fill the screens of the audience at home.

These paws are one of the many gimmicks which, consistently both crass and crap, pop up throughout the evening. A DJ failing spectacularly to gee up the crowd offers us the surely priceless opportunity to vote for Dan Worrall’s entry music. I choose not to exercise my franchise in this instance. Wannabe tactical masterminds can win a Citizen watch by correctly guessing when the strategic time-out will be called. Kids in the crowd are encouraged to send in selfies, which are then transformed through the power of AI into crappy cartoons. Demonstrating a certain American bias in the material used for machine learning, many of these kids are turned into baseball players or appear floating over distorted baseball diamonds. That these images are so indisputably awful does, if nothing else, increase my hope that perhaps there’s more time than I might otherwise have thought before AI enslaves or eliminates the human race.

The disappointing level of effort put into the pageantry around the game is reflected in the distinct lack of spirit – London or otherwise – visible on the field. The match feels flat, missing a heart or a hook to draw the crowd in. We are treated, albeit briefly thanks to the Spirit’s dismal 80 all out performance, to the sight of David Warner and Kane Williamson batting together. We get to see Rashid Khan take three wickets for just 11 runs in his 20 balls. But nobody really seems to feel anything about it. The two noisiest moments of the night are the customary boos that welcome Warner whenever he steps onto a cricket pitch in England (in this instance coming from what is supposed to be his home crowd), and, far louder, the uproar in response to the sight of a rogue fox doing a couple of laps of the pitch before leaping the hoardings and disappearing into the night. If this is the best this tournament can offer, perhaps the assembled billionaire investors looking down from their hospitality boxes might have had pause for thought about what they’ve got themselves into.

Sometimes it’s good to engage with things you disagree with because it confirms all your assumptions were correct. The ECB has sold August for £520m. A princely sum, but perhaps only enough to put all 18 counties, briefly, into the black and further stuff the coffers of the MCC. The great hope that the format could be replicable in overseas markets and bring in consistent, and considerable, revenue to keep the whole of cricket afloat in England and Wales is being eroded by the day. New owners are making clear their intention for The Hundred to transform into a T20 franchise tournament, and they appear to be comprehensively outmanoeuvring the ECB who are already talking about the move to the 120-ball format as something of a fait accompli. The tournament’s MD, Vikram Banerjee, is laying the groundwork for significant change in public statements about how ‘it would be odd to bring in all these great people and leave [the tournament] as it is’, while ECB Chair Richard Gould has already stated- that ‘if there’s a [global T20] Champions League format it would be a Hundred team’ that would represent the ECB and ‘we’d want to be involved at the earliest opportunity.’

Some might cheer these portents of doom for The Hundred, but its transformation into an eight-franchise T20 tournament does not augur well for the county structure. Those host counties which have not yet sold their stakes in each team will continue to see financial benefits, and presumably those who have sold may see some revenue from the use of their grounds. But the wider county structure will suffer. Presumably, the Blast, which has hitherto been a somewhat sustainable earner for most, will be further devalued and the likelihood of additional cuts to matches beyond those already mooted for the 2026 season will increase. The County Championship will continue to be played in the margins of the season and remain blighted by weather- and light-affected draws. While the ECB has scheduled two Pakistan Tests in August 2026, it is probable that most series will continue to be squeezed into the June and July windows and will have to share that space with ODIs and T20Is. This will lead to more matches like the recent fifth Test against India at The Oval where both teams rested multiple star players due to fatigue and injuries picked up over the course of a truncated series.

In sum, it seems likely that, thanks to a combination of hubris and mismanagement, the ECB has parted with the primetime slot in the English season for a short-term cash injection that may, at best, serve to prop up a crumbling system for a few more years. If the future of domestic cricket in England is the sight of a revolving cast of big hitters, who have run out for so many teams around the world they don’t even know where they are anymore, slog it out for MI London or Manchester Super Giants for an audience of oligarchs and AI-generated children, whether they do so for 100 or 120 balls, I think I’ll just stay at home and read The Economist.

[1] Unfortunately, my actual day job got in the way of me attending the opening women’s game – by all accounts, a much more entertaining match – which started at 2:45pm.