After the Lord Mayor’s Show of Test cricket… the crits of The Hundred

4 minute read

After the Lord Mayor’s Show comes a cart to clear up all the horseshit. That is at least a very different thing from what preceded it, rather than merely a shorter version of the same thing that’s consequently far more limited in scope. In that sense The Hundred can at times feel like an even greater stepdown in entertainment than the definitive example of such a thing.

We’ve said before that we have no particular burning hatred for The Hundred. It’s still cricket and we like cricket. At the same time, it’s rare that we’ve felt quite so jarringly underwhelmed by the sport as when this year’s competition got underway less than 24 hours after an uncommonly good five-Test series between England and India. 

> Please will you explain why you feel such pure visceral hatred for The Hundred

It was a tussle that showcased the far extents of the Test format, highlighting its incredible open-endedness, the endless different ways players can approach the unfolding situations and the impossibility of reliably predicting how each match will play out.

Chasing 371 to win, Ben Duckett set off at a sprint and tried to score at a run a ball. Chasing 193 to win, Ravindra Jadeja was left with the tail and was reduced to scoring at one run an over.

Harry Brook charged Jasprit Bumrah, Shubman Gill made endless hundreds, Chris Woakes went out to bat with just one working arm and Ben Stokes and Mohammed Siraj embraced every experience that was on offer.

It was, frankly, a dizzying few weeks. Legend has it that in the 17th Century, the Kangxi Emperor held a feast that comprised six banquets over three days and featured over 300 dishes – but surely even that would have taken less time to digest than this.

Despite that, looking at the BBC’s cricket page the day after the series finished, you’d have struggled to know it had even happened. Bar a reference to Woakes’ shoulder, everything had been pushed down the page by the next thing. 

Life moves on and sport is fundamentally of the moment, but this felt like rudely and unexpectedly hustling an old friend out of the door at some artificial deadline they’d been entirely unaware of.

Compounding the effect was what that next thing was.

Every. Ball. Counts.

It’s fine, it’s fun and there’s some good moments, but like all shorter formats, The Hundred is built around narrowing possibilities. It’s deliberately designed to push players towards attempting the same few things, again and again and again. Fours and sixes are of course entertaining but when circumstance makes attempting them all but mandatory, it sands off a bit of the excitement.

If you were to delve through some of the defensive interviews with ECB executives in search of an explanation for why the summer has been scheduled this way, you’d find vague comments about tapping into the momentum via a more spectator-friendly format.

It’s not a mad idea. It’s probably a better bet than taking the kids down to day three of a County Championship match, but it’s also, unavoidably, not quite as exciting or as big a deal as that thing that was going on last week.

As such, we find ourself viewing The Hundred not as a blazing futuristic frontier, but more of a fun, disposable exhibition where you might turn up to catch a glimpse of Harry Brook in the hope that maybe he hits a few of those shots of his.

It brings to mind, in fact, the weird phenomenon of the post-Tour de France criterium. For a couple of weeks after the Tour finishes, all the main characters from that year’s race take part in a host of circuit races so that fans can see them and have a bit of fun. They’re not serious races – in fact the results are usually fixed – but the riders go quickly and they put on a show. It’s froth, but a load of Belgians get to have a few beers and a fun night out.

We’re not saying The Hundred is rigged. It’s more that in a year like this, when a particularly good Test series has immediately preceded it, comparison leaves it looking rather lightweight.

Not every spectacle demands an impassioned investment from its audience though. We all need a bit of a breather from time to time. There’s worse ways of passing an afternoon.

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