Lord's
Cricket
The Hundred
London
Score:
42
/ 60
Overview
I tried to approach The Hundred with an open mind. I really did. I desperately wanted to be converted. To see the thrilling game of cricket I’d been missing amongst all the horrific TV graphics and the gimmicks. Maybe it would have been better at one of the rowdier grounds. Perhaps at Edgbaston or Headingley, where crowds dress up and sing and chat, this would make some kind of sense. But at Lord’s? No. The Home of Cricket is the home of a very particular kind of cricket. It’s a bastion of a kind of genteel spectator experience where great feats are generally greeted with enthusiastic, but polite applause. It’s known for its that unmistakable hum of conversation that has provided the backing track to countless days of Test Match Special. It’s not a venue that’s suited to DJ booths, fireworks, and people dancing in wombat costumes. Or at least not when those additions are done with such minimal effort. To break the staid, traditionalist atmosphere of Lord’s you’d need to set off enough fireworks to trigger a seismic event in north west London. You’d need something so much better than AI modified selfies. You even need better sponsors. If the best you can get is the UK’s biggest crisp conglomerate sponsoring half the teams with its various brands and Compare the Market with their dancing wombat men, can this really be sustainable? God, I hope not. If the ship of English cricket is going down, let is plummet to the bottom of the ocean of irrelevance with some dignity. Anything but this.
Score Summaries
Atmosphere & Experience: 1
It just isn’t very good. The minimum level of effort has been put in to making this anything other than a typical T20 Blast night. You could buy the fireworks used at the start of the match – which is the opening game of the entire tournament – for about £30 in your local corner shop. It wouldn’t even need to be around Bonfire Night or New Year when they have a wider assortment of fireworks on offer. Just whatever garden variety box of pyrotechnics you can get year-round. For tournament whose teams – sorry, franchises - have recently been valued at close to £1bn, you’d be forgiven for expecting higher production values. In much the same way that Blast matches, particularly at London venues, feel like a corporate night out rather than a cricket match, there’s a distinct feeling that nobody really cares what’s going on here. It all seems devoid of context, jeopardy, or excitement. It’s hard to put a finger on why the 20,000 or so non-members here have paid around £40 each for this. After the spectacle on show here, it’s hard to imagine any of them doing so again.
Seats: 8
Every stand at Lord’s, even the newer ones, is iconic. There are very few bad seats in the house. You’ll pay a reasonably high price for them, especially for sport of such a low quality, but you’ll have an excellent view of English cricket having its soul ripped out and replaced with a black corporate heart fuelled by dollars and TikToks.
Catering: 9
Lord’s has some of the best food and drink options of any cricket venue in the UK. There is also a large, open air food court at the Nursery End where you can eat, drink, socialise, and basically do anything other than watch The Hundred.
Facilities: 9
Plentiful, clean, and, what’s more, there are a lot of cubicles where you can hide as you weep for the loss of the national summer game.
Getting There: 8
Avoid St. John’s Wood station. It’s a reasonably pleasant walk from Baker Street or, if you have the patience to navigate Piccadilly, Regent Street, and Oxford Street, you can opt to get the bus from the heart of the square mile.
Getting Away: 7
Expect busy tubes, especially if you’ve opted to go to St. John’s Wood, and a possible wait for the bus.