The Hundred — English Cricket's Divisive Experiment

The Hundred was launched by the England and Wales Cricket Board in August 2021 as a new short-format competition based on innings of 100 balls per side. The format was designed by the ECB's then-chief executive Tom Harrison and his commercial team in the period 2017-2018, approved by the ECB's board in April 2018, and introduced after a one-year delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The competition's eight franchises were city-based — Birmingham Phoenix, London Spirit, Manchester Originals, Northern Superchargers, Oval Invincibles, Southern Brave, Trent Rockets, Welsh Fire — and were owned by the ECB rather than by independent investors. The structural intention was to attract new audiences to cricket, particularly women and children, by offering a shorter and more accessible format than T20 cricket alongside a parallel women's competition with equal prominence and equivalent scheduling.

The political and commercial context was specific. English cricket faced two structural problems by the late 2010s. First, the ECB's broadcast deals had moved entirely to subscription television in 2005, removing live cricket from free-to-air screens for the first time in the format's modern history; the resulting decline in casual viewership was widely cited as the driver of broader audience erosion. Second, the IPL's emergence had reorganised the global franchise T20 calendar in ways that crowded out an English T20 league within the existing format. The ECB's analysis was that a distinct format — not T20 — was the only way to differentiate an English city-based competition from the international T20 calendar and to recover free-to-air broadcast access (the BBC contracted to broadcast a portion of The Hundred matches, the first cricket on free-to-air British television in fifteen years).

The opposition to The Hundred from established cricket constituencies was sustained, sharp and broadly-based. The eighteen first-class counties, on whose territory the eight franchises were imposed, opposed the structure as a financial threat to the existing county system; the format chosen for the competition (100 balls rather than the 120 of a T20 innings) was widely derided in cricket commentary as 'gimmick cricket' designed for marketing rather than cricketing reasons; the Cricket Supporters' Association reported in surveys that approximately 63 per cent of existing English cricket supporters opposed the format. The ECB's communication strategy in the run-up to the launch was widely seen as defensive and dismissive of the existing supporter base, with Harrison and his marketing team focused on attracting new audiences in ways that appeared to discount the concerns of the existing one.

The launch in August 2021 produced mixed results. The on-field cricket was successful enough — the women's competition in particular drew larger crowds than English domestic women's cricket had ever attracted, and the broadcast figures including the BBC component exceeded the ECB's targets. The cricketing reception was less favourable: senior players including Joe Root, Chris Woakes and Mark Wood expressed reservations about the format's effect on Test cricket preparation; the schedule clashed with the Royal London Cup, the existing 50-over domestic competition, depriving the counties of their best players and audiences during the same window; international touring sides expressed concern about the priority the ECB was giving to The Hundred over bilateral international fixtures during the August window. The 2022 and 2023 seasons reproduced the same pattern: commercial success on its own terms, sustained cricketing controversy about the format's effect on the broader English cricket structure.

The Hundred was launched by the England and Wales Cricket Board in 2021 as a completely new format — each innings consisting of 100 balls rather than the traditional over-based structure. The competition featured eight city-based franchises, a new jargon (including "25-ball PowerPlay" replacing the traditional PowerPlay), and was marketed primarily at families and new audiences rather than traditional cricket fans.

The backlash was fierce. Traditional cricket supporters and county cricket advocates argued the ECB was cannibalizing existing domestic cricket — particularly the T20 Blast, which was already successful — to create a format nobody had asked for. Counties were sidelined from ownership and governance, despite their grounds hosting the matches. The simplified rules (no more counting to six for an over) were seen as patronizing to potential new fans. Critics labeled it a vanity project driven by broadcast revenue rather than genuine cricketing need.

Defenders pointed to improved diversity in audiences, the women's competition which received unprecedented visibility and investment, and strong broadcast numbers. The ECB argued traditional cricket was failing to attract younger, more diverse audiences and radical innovation was necessary. However, the competition continued to generate controversy over its impact on county cricket finances, player availability for international matches, and whether the ECB was investing enough in grassroots cricket. The Hundred remains one of the most polarizing innovations in cricket history.

“We are creating a competition for the audiences we have not yet attracted. We are not designing it for the audiences we already have.”

“It is gimmick cricket. The 100-ball format is not a cricketing innovation. It is a marketing decision.”

“Sixty-three per cent of existing English cricket supporters oppose The Hundred. The ECB has built a competition that the existing audience does not want.”

“The women's competition has been the success the ECB needed. It has changed the visibility of women's cricket in England in a way nothing else had done.”

“The franchise sale has valued the competition. The cricketing debate about the format will continue. The ECB has chosen one of those questions over the other.”

The structural debate around The Hundred dominated English cricket administration through the early 2020s. The Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket (ICEC), established by the ECB in 2021 to investigate broader issues of discrimination and access in English cricket, published its report in June 2023 with extensive criticism of The Hundred's effect on the eighteen-county structure and a recommendation that the ECB reorient its competitive structure around the existing county base. The ECB rejected the structural recommendation but accepted a number of governance and inclusion proposals from the report. The continuing tension between The Hundred's supporters and the broader English cricket establishment produced sustained internal debate at the ECB, the County Cricket Trust and the various player associations.

The ECB's eventual response to the structural pressure was to monetise The Hundred rather than restructure it. In 2024 the ECB announced it would sell minority equity stakes in each of the eight franchises to private investors. The auction process completed in early 2025 and produced valuations that substantially exceeded the ECB's expectations — the eight franchises raised approximately £520 million in combined sale proceeds, with the Oval Invincibles and London Spirit producing the highest individual valuations on the strength of their London market positions and historical performance. The proceeds were distributed across the eighteen counties under a structure agreed with the County Cricket Trust, providing what was widely understood to be a financial cushion for the county system through the next decade.

The cultural reception remained substantially divided. Supporters of The Hundred — including a substantial majority of the new audience the competition had attracted, the women's cricket establishment, and the BBC and Sky broadcast partners — argued that the competition had achieved its core objectives of audience expansion and women's cricket prominence. Critics — including the Cricket Supporters' Association, a substantial proportion of the existing county membership and a number of senior English internationals — argued that the competition had achieved its commercial objectives at structural cost to the broader English cricket pyramid and that the 100-ball format itself remained an unjustified deviation from the international T20 standard.