When Harry Brook was wowing those at Headingley on Tuesday night with a no-look six during a record-equalling 50, it felt in that particular moment that everything might at last be coming together for the Hundred.
A competition with multiple launches but a recurring marketing campaign promising to take a new audience to new places – what better than a shot that wasn’t even a thing when 100-ball cricket was dreamt up? – was doing so through one of its homegrown pin-ups.
Undoubtedly, Brook’s 15-ball half century at Headingley just past the midpoint of the Hundred’s sixth season ticked all the boxes, fulfilling the pledges to make this competition second only to the Indian Premier League in short-form stature and to feature England’s premier players at its forefront.
The strength of the attack the 27-year-old was up against spoke of the quality on show this year: six of the London Spirit bowlers were internationals and the seventh was James Coles, the Hundred’s most expensive auction purchase ever at £390,000.
Yet that snapshot also exposed two sporting spheres colliding. In South Asia and North America – the territories from which this year’s new money in a £975million Hundred upgrade has come – franchises pop up, move cities and disband with minimal fuss while supporters are more willing to change allegiance depending on where their favourite players move.
Here in the UK, though, we are a parochial bunch and one trick that the newly owned teams either missed, or brazenly disregarded, was signing local county players to their respective Hundred teams to boost identity.
When Harry Brook was hitting a no-look six during a record-equalling 50, it felt in that particular moment that everything might at last be coming together for the Hundred
Australia stars Marcus Stoinis (left) and Adam Zampa (batting) are two of the international stars cementing the Hundred as the second-strongest short-form competition behind the IPL
Nowhere in the country is as insular as Yorkshire and it felt wrong during the early stages of this year’s auction that SunRisers Leeds were not going all out to recruit one of Joe Root, Jonny Bairstow or Adil Rashid. It left Brook and his former Burley-in-Wharfedale club mate Matthew Revis as the only familiar faces to relate to on Tuesday.
Southampton-based Southern Brave have just one Hampshire player in their ranks in teenager Manny Lumsden, a squad player rather than a first-choice pick and could not retain their local hero and captain James Vince in this season’s auction.
Somerset’s England Twenty20 international Tom Banton has played for three Hundred franchises, but has spent the past three seasons at Trent Rockets and admits continuity in squads is needed to deepen connections with fans.
‘If they’re coming every year and there’s new faces, I guess it’s hard for people to get behind the team and support, isn’t it?’ says Banton. ‘Whereas if you’ve been playing for a few years, they can kind of relate to you, get to know you and want to come and watch you.’
In contrast to the majority of their new-money rivals, the table-topping Rockets have also maintained the same colours and badge following the tournament’s unofficial relaunch. Five seasons of familiarity has been removed elsewhere.
Until recently, Headingley was full of purple-shirted Northern Superchargers fans. Overnight, following the complete buyout of Yorkshire’s stake in the competition by Sunrisers Hyderabad, they were being asked to form an orange army, and support Leeds rather than band together as the North. Best of luck.
Colours and identities are important to a British supporter base. Recall the anger when Cardiff City switched from blue to red shirts and ditched the bluebird for a dragon or when Hull City’s former owner Assem Allam applied to change the club’s name to Hull Tigers.
The Sunrisers are one of three teams to have changed names, along with Oval Invincibles becoming MI London and the Manchester Originals being renamed Manchester Super Giants. All have badges and kits to reflect their IPL links, although MI have retained the colours of the reigning three-in-a-row champions Invincibles for training.
Oval Invincibles won the last three men’s titles wearing a turquoise strip, before being taken over by Mumbai Indians and becoming MI London, playing in royal blue
Meanwhile, the Old Trafford-based franchise have gone from being Manchester Originals in black kits to Manchester Super Giants in red and navy stripes
Southern Brave have gone from green and black to blue and red. Birmingham Phoenix have moved from orange shirts to black. To their credit, both Manchester and Leeds teams have begun schemes to make the switch easier, giving out replica shirts to every ticket holder at their early matches.
MI London launched a shirt amnesty in which turquoise 2025 Oval Invincibles shirts could be exchanged for the new royal blue ones. Additionally, they produced a club T-shirt for £20 under their ‘Twenty’s Plenty’ campaign.
Vikram Banerjee, the Hundred’s managing director, says that 40 per cent of those through the turnstiles are Under 16s and that ‘as we look to deepen and accelerate fandom, merchandise sales are a great barometer. Southern Brave and London Spirit are already having to restock, and nearly 40,000 fans are wearing the new jerseys of Manchester Super Giants or SunRisers Leeds.’ Presumably referencing the freebies.
Filling their grounds with a shirt-donning, flag-waving, family-oriented crowd has been championed as a success by the host counties too, but there are sceptics from within the county game about the real impact underneath the veneer, with one executive telling Daily Mail Sport: ‘The rebranding is utterly ridiculous. They’ve alienated the local people, and now they’ve whacked the prices up that nobody can afford it. And the sales are through the floor.
‘I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m just looking at the Hundred right now and thinking we’ve seen this before – it was called LIV Golf. So, is the Hundred even going to be here in three years’ time?’
Whether it is the impact of the cost-of-living crisis, increased ticket prices or the rebranding that has proved a turnoff remains to be seen, but the Hundred is proving a hard sell in 2026. The first block of matches saw attendances down around 20 per cent on last year, the second block dropping by 27 per cent.
Crowds have generally picked up across the competitions since, but with ticketing operations now run by the organisations themselves rather than centrally, entrance fees hitting a high of £55 is an issue, even if you do get access to both parts of the men’s and women’s double-header for your money.
That is some hike for a competition that spent its first iteration between 2021-25 dishing out complimentary seats to its target audience of mums and kids. The problem with freebies, though, comes when you ask people to start paying instead.
The first block of matches saw attendances down around 20 per cent on last year, the second block dropping by 27 per cent
Brook’s blockbuster knock was watched by just over 9,000 spectators this week, a few hundred down on the 9,438 that turned out for the Leeds v Manchester contest. By comparison, the established Roses Twenty20 Blast fixture, promoted with a fraction of the budget, drew 11,300 at Headingley in June.
Kaviya Maran, part of the Sun Group that owns the SunRisers said the first signs at Headingley were ‘a good beginning’, adding: ‘Obviously it’s a new brand for them.’
It was a similar story across the Pennines at Old Trafford, scene of a 16,500 sellout for the reverse Blast match. The cheapest tickets were £30 with £8 concessions for that, and while those for Super Giants matches cost less, starting at £24 and £5 in advance, their average men’s Hundred crowd has been under 12,000.
There have been some misjudgments. A huge proportion of Yorkshire fans will refuse to support a team with Leeds in its name, especially after the woeful attempt to incorporate Leeds United’s Marching On Together as the club song via a (swiftly deleted) social media post.
There have been highs, such as Welsh Fire setting attendance records for any women’s match in Wales and in the men’s competition on July 25 for the visit of the MI London teams. And the women’s game is benefitting with a higher percentage of people turning up earlier to stadia. Eighty per cent of fans that watched Southern Brave’s men on July 27 had been there early doors to see the women’s game too.
While the cash-rich Hundred stumbles, the county game it has kicked into the side verges has witnessed a series of triumphs. Helped by the presence of Ben Stokes, Durham sold out Jesmond when hosting Glamorgan in the MetroBank One-Day Cup and had to warn ticketless supporters not to turn up on matchday. There were 2,300 present to witness a thrilling match that saw Durham recover from 97 for six to knock off their 327-run target with three balls to spare.
Stokes was also in the Durham team that played to almost 5,000 in defeat by Yorkshire at York last week, 48 hours after the same venue accommodated 4,500 for the visit of Worcestershire.
Gloucestershire have had to expand their capacity for their visits to Cheltenham this year because of demand and although these numbers are more modest than the Hundred, full outgrounds are aesthetically pleasing to see and provide a county’s emerging players with an entry level for professional cricket.
By contrast, the Roses T20 Blast match drew a sell-out crowd of 16,500 – despite prices being higher than the Hundred
Peter Matthews, chairman of Gloucestershire, is an advocate of taking 50-over cricket to venues ‘that don’t normally see cricket,’ adding: ‘It has echoes for those of a certain generation of some of the Sunday League grounds. Gloucestershire used to play a Sunday League game at a number of different grounds – Lydney, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucester – which we can’t do now because it doesn’t work economically.’
Matthews says the lack of an obvious Hundred competitor in the region has helped footfall during the period between the World Cup and the start of the Premier League in a fortnight. And non-host clubs like his have been able to plan for more sustainable futures thanks to the £25million individual windfalls from the ECB’s big sell-off.
In addition to paying off their debts – ‘we got ourselves into a bit of a muddle,’ says Matthews – Gloucestershire ploughed £3million into a project codenamed Dressing Rooms, which drastically improved player and match official facilities plus general infrastructure at their Nevil Road headquarters.
Leicestershire are another to have been dragged out of the red by the Hundred’s millions, and they have begun feasibility studies on adding further non-cricket earnings to their annual income.
They have already been creative in this space on a smaller scale, holding drive-in cinema days last weekend and planning to install a 4G multi-sports pitch alongside the country’s largest playing area to be hired out during the winter. Their decision to allow children in free this month has resonated with their following, coming during the school holidays.
Chief executive Emma White says: ‘We’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis, so I think there’s a ridiculous squeeze on the leisure pound. Are we getting a true reflection of the Hundred effect? I’m not entirely sure we are, if I’m totally honest. We’re seeing a true reflection of the fact that people can’t afford to do much at the moment.
‘The massive positive is that it’s given quite a lot of counties more than you would imagine, the breathing space needed to kind of reset a little bit and almost future-proof cricket in their area by investing in revenue-generating projects.’
With the £25million lump sums viewed as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to become less reliant on ECB annual handouts, counties – particularly the non-hosts – are taking their time to assess how best to invest. Durham recently received planning permission for an on-site hotel that they first discussed pre-Covid and will now employ a project director to produce a report on profitability, given the rise of costs in the hospitality industry.
Counties – particularly the non-hosts – are taking their time to assess how best to invest. Durham received planning permission for an on-site hotel that they first discussed pre-Covid
But there is a fear that however smartly the money is used, the disparity between those that have taken the finite sum and those still with skin in the Hundred game is only going to widen
The IPL might be a behemoth now but it took the expansion of the league from eight to ten teams in 2011 to truly realise its potential
But there is a fear that however smartly the money is used, the disparity between those that have taken the finite sum and those still with skin in the Hundred game is only going to widen.
‘Host counties are going to become wealthier and more able to attract the best players,’ said one county chair. ‘Fundamentally you’re talking about those grounds having tradition, history and scale. It’s very difficult to argue against tradition, history, and scale. They’re always going to generate more revenue than elsewhere.’
To back up the theory, the Lord’s-based Spirit have been valued at £300million – two and a half times more than the field. Suspicion remains around the shires that while this year’s competition will not return profits for the new investors, they are biding their time until expansion. Teams based in Bristol and Chester-le-Street would be the most obvious additions.
It was not until the IPL increased from eight to ten teams that the original set hit a goldmine, as the fee paid for the rights to own a new franchise would be distributed among the rest of the existing teams. And that with half the teams now controlled by powerful IPL owners, it is only a matter of time before Indian players are allowed to feature in a league outside of their own, significantly increasing its value in television and commercial rights on the subcontinent.
At which point, Hundred teams would potentially need fewer Englishmen and counties would be re-stocked with some of their primary talents, opening the chance to play the County Championship throughout August once more and easing a schedule already past saturation point. Unlike Brook’s shot in Leeds, all eyes are on what direction the Hundred will go now.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login