My girlfriend is much more into cricket than I am. She actually watches test games. So when I saw tickets to The Hundred were on sale and available, I surprised her by getting us tickets to Birmingham Phoenix’s first ever game against London Spirit.
Phoenix won, I had an amazing time, and since then we went back and saw them dispatch the Trent Rockets, and watched two further Birmingham games on TV - their loss against Manchester Originals and their win over Oval Invincibles. I’ve only missed one Birmingham Phoenix game so far - the loss against Southern Brave (a game my girlfriend, who appears to have become a Birmingham Phoenix super fan, decided to watch).
So what is it that caused me - someone who knows the rules of cricket (I used to play in my youth, but never really watched it) - to really get into The Hundred? Is it all marketing or is it really something you should watch?
Format changes
The big change which The Hundred brings to cricket is shortening the length of an over from six balls to five. While traditional cricket fans may see this as a step change in the game, this is to ensure there is a clean number of overs in a full innings of 100 balls.
In marketing terms - and if we are honest, The Hundred is a marketing exercise to bring cricket to new audiences - The Hundred is far easier to explain to non-cricketing fans than the other main short format, Twenty 20. In The Hundred you get One Hundred balls. The clue is in the name. In T20 you get 20 overs of six balls - still simple, but needing the follow-up question of “what is an over?”
In playing terms, 100 balls is a surprisingly round number. It is low enough to contain the whole game into two and a half hours, low enough to have a clear focus on batting and high scoring, but also high enough that it is not simply a slugfest and there are tactics involved.
Take Oval Invinvible’s innings this week against Birmingham Phoenix, Oval had a pretty slow start to the game but ended up racking up 172 runs. The 173 target for Birmingham being the largest chase in the tournament so far - a total which they overcame thanks largely to some big batting by Moeen Ali.
Excitement
In that game, Ali hit a four followed by three sixes in a row. 22 runs from just four balls. They hit back to back boundaries five times across their innings, with The Invincibles doing so six times.
Sticking with Birmingham, in their previous game against the (then unbeaten) Trent Rockets, Birmingham went on a streak between balls 14 and 20 where Finn Allen and Will Smeed delivered Six, Four, One (wide), One, Six, Six, Four, Six. 32 runs off just seven balls (a wide ball awards a run and the ball is retaken). This kind of batting doesn’t happen in a test series, where you’re more likely to see a batter bed in and slowly tick over the runs.
In The Hundred, every ball counts - and you see batting like this.
And this excitement will bring fans in, particularly young fans who want to see the big hitting. Having been at two of Birmingham’s three games at Edgbaston, the crowd respond to that and make going to games in The Hundred fun. This will grow the sport and increase the number of people who will watch the game, and will keep watching and coming back to cricket.
The women’s game
But one of the almost fluke aspects of The Hundred which is doing wonders for the game is putting women’s games back-to-back with men’s games. This was never supposed to happen - the women were supposed to play in separate stadiums and at separate times - but this genius (not to mention cost-cutting) move, has given the women’s game’s equal status to the men’s games. With the same shirts, same stadiums, and same team identities as the men. The same ticket even gets to you both games.
The ticketing move is brilliant for the spectator experience too as there will be a natural audience of people wanting to get there for the women’s game, then people will drip in during the women’s game (they may have work or other commitments and not be able to make the start), and even if the stadium is only a third full at the end of the women’s game, that is thousands of people who are not waiting to get in. This reduces congestion and makes entry - even close to the start of the second match - a smooth process.
This is not the women’s game hanging on the coat tails of the men’s game either. In fact, the inaugural game of The Hundred - live on the BBC to an audience of millions (how great is it to see cricket on free to air TV?) - was a standalone women’s fixture. The exposure of fans to women’s sport is huge for the game and will help grow the number of women who want to take part.
Low cost
But for all the talk of exposure, of growing the sport, of something big and new and exciting, this is all meaningless if people can’t afford tickets. And this surprised me - how cheap it is to go to The Hundred. Tickets start as low as £12 for an adult, with junior tickets as low as £5. This means a family of four can go to a match - and watch two games of elite level cricket - for just £34. There are not many elite sports events where a single adult comes in at less than £34 - never mind a family ticket.
And the value gets enormous when looking at season tickets. A season ticket to The Hundred cost (depending on the venue) either £50 or £60. Taking the higher number, assuming you attend both the men’s and women’s games, and considering teams play four home fixtures, that’s eight games of elite level cricket for just £60. It works out at just £7.50 a game. Outstanding value which you will struggle to find elsewhere.
And I hope The Hundred keeps this ticketing strategy. The crowds across the tournament have been big, with plenty of families and younger people in attendance. A big part of The Hundred’s appeal is its accessibility. It’s in the simplified rules and it’s in the ticketing strategy. I hope this is not lost in future years.
Prime target
I accept though that I am essentially prime target for The Hundred. I understand the basics of cricket - I even played a bit of it in my youth (I was terrible) - but I’ve never been to a game or really bothered to watch it on TV. I have never really seen the appeal of watching a game that can genuinely last all day (or even a week). So a short format which is wrapped up in a couple of hours has huge appeal to me, and I am hooked.
The Hundred has such appeal because it attracts the very people who aren’t likely to watch a game of cricket. And if they like what they see, why wouldn’t they look at a slightly longer format? Twenty 20 is only forty more balls across the whole game. I can say I’d certainly try it.
But even if they don’t, more people being invested and interested in this form of cricket - even if it is a hyped up and aggressively marketed version of cricket - is surely a good thing. Two weeks ago I had never been to a cricket game. On Monday I’ll be going to my third in just over two weeks. Assuming I’m not alone, and The Hundred does open up cricket to a big new audience, then it will have a role in the sport long term.
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