When Colin Graves became the ECB chairman back in 2015, when all The Hundred PR disasters were just a glint in an incompetent marketing director’s eye, he spoke about a sense of decline in the English game and the need to “reinvent and rejuvenate” the sport:
I want to leave a legacy for English cricket in that we have improved it, made it more accessible, and more user-friendly … in the past we have had all these different reviews looking at various aspects such as the Schofield Review and the Morgan Review. We won’t be doing any of that any more …
We have got to do something and not just do it the old fashioned way of looking at what the ECB wants. Cricket still has a place in the hearts of the public but we have to work hard so everybody likes to watch it and play it.
He also talked passionately about the need for a new T20 competition to rival the IPL and The Big Bash. Apparently The Blast just wasn’t cutting it:
We have something that works only so far and can be better … we have lost our way a bit in Twenty20.
Graves also identified, quite correctly, that the absence of live cricket on terrestrial television was a massive problem. But there was no solution on the horizon:
It would be nice to have some cricket on terrestrial television but the problem we have got is terrestrial television does not want cricket … I would love to get cricket on terrestrial television in one format or another … but if you have terrestrial broadcasters that don’t want cricket then what can you do?
Fortunately, approximately two years later, Colin Graves’s suave new chief executive Tom Harrison, who had a background in TV rights, came up with a silver bullet to solve two problems at once: an exciting new city-based T20 tournament that would reinvigorate the domestic game plus get some live cricket back on the tele.
This was an enormous coup for the ECB and Graves must have been delighted. The television deal they’d secured was staggering: £1.1 billion for eight domestic T20 games and two T20 internationals on the BBC, plus the usual blanket coverage of England Tests, ODIs, and the remaining T20s on Sky. This eye-watering deal was more than double what they’d achieved during the last broadcast auction in 2012. Pats on the back all round.
Here’s what Harrison said when he proudly announced the deal. He boasted that the new T20 competition would get English cricket exactly where they wanted it to be:
We set out 18 months ago to get a balance of reach and revenue. That was the driver behind the whole process … we are now in a completely different place to where we were in terms of that relationship … it is not just about the money, it is about the belief together we can create a transformed environment for cricket going forward.
The addition of the BBC delivers a multi-pronged approach in the way cricket becomes more accessible through the BBC’s channels and the national broadcaster’s whole operation.
It is a game-changer for cricket in this country. It is a ground-breaking moment for us and we are extremely excited about the potential here for putting cricket in an unbelievably strong place to meet the challenges that every sport faces about being relevant and an exciting choice for people to get involved in in the future.
The message here was clear. The new franchise T20 would be a game-changer. It would revive English cricket. The ECB had found a way to safeguard the future of the game. They even talked about how young people digested media differently these days: the digital clips included in the deal would help cricket to reach a new audience.
It wasn’t long before this ‘reaching a new audience’ narrative became arguably the most important message of all. Here’s what Harrison said about his new T20 competition soon afterwards on cricinfo:
We have to think differently if we’re going to be successful at attracting family audiences to our competitions. We need to change our thinking on that to be relevant to a new generation that responds to big box-office occasions.
This (new T20 competition) is about creating something different … creating something dramatically different for English cricket and for a thriving new audience for English cricket … We’ve done an awful lot of work in understanding our county championship audience, our Blast audience, our 50-over audience.
What this is designed to do is complement that with a whole new audience that we’re currently not talking to. This is a fantastic opportunity for us to create something that appeals to an entirely new audience, grows cricket’s overall audience, and enable us to control something that has real value for the long term.
But then something suddenly changed. Even though the new T20 tournament seemed to tick all the ECB’s boxes and meet all of its previously declared objectives, the board suddenly announced in April 2018 that it wouldn’t be a T20 competition after all. It would be a new 100-ball format.
Everyone was puzzled by this move – supporters, players, and even the counties (who had a lot to gain from the competition financially) seemed nonplussed.
And yet, mysteriously, the arguments in favour of the new competition did not change. Indeed, The Hundred PR had a very familiar ring to it. Here’s how Harrison justified the Hundred when they launched the concept:
This is a fresh and exciting idea which will appeal to a younger audience and attract new fans to the game. Our game has a history of innovation and we have a duty to look for future growth for the health and sustainability of the whole game.
And here’s what he told the BBC’s Tuffers & Vaughan show about The Hundred:
It is a huge opportunity if we do things a bit differently to get hold of a much wider audience. It’s an opportunity for us to think slightly differently and present the game in a way. We know there are (people) would be part of this cricket community if we were able to make the game appeal to them in a way we know we can, through presenting it on TV, through digital channels in a different way, getting young people and kids involved in a different way.
It’s amazing how the narrative hadn’t changed one iota – only the format had changed. The ECB were using exactly the same language to promote a very new and very different concept. There was even the same old stuff about digital channels.
The Hundred PR even repeated the same old line that the tournament was necessary to attract a terrestrial broadcaster – even though the above proves this was an egregious lie. The BBC was clearly onboard when the new competition was slated to be a T20. The new Hundred format had nothing to do with it, no matter what Colin Graves disingenuously claimed at the Department Of Culture Media And Sport Committee in October this year.
This whole episode is very curious indeed. Why did the ECB change the format when it simply didn’t need to? Everything was in place for the new project when it was a T20 competition – even the bit about broadcasters being part of the decision making process and having a say in the team-names and locations.
All the groundwork was done back in 2017: the number of teams, the fact these would be new teams not counties, the squad sizes, the number of games, the start date, the fact there will be different salary bands, a player draft, and wildcards picks – all this was in place when the competition was going to be a T20.
The Hundred PR claims, of course, that the ECB changed the format as a result of rigorous research – research they have constantly refused to publish. One wonders, therefore, whether this research was also done with a new T20 tournament in mind?
In the absence of any research appearing in the public domain, the only rationalisation we’ve had that applies specifically to the Hundred was that ill-advised and clumsy intervention by Andrew Strauss last year. Here’s a reminder:
“It’s aimed at mums and kids … what we’re trying to do is appeal to a new audience, people that aren’t traditional cricket fans. We want to make the game as simple as possible for them to understand.”
Unfortunately this narrative was deeply patronising to the target audience. The idea than kids, and especially mums, couldn’t count to six is rather insulting not to mention crazy. After all, who can’t count to six but can count to five? No wonder this ‘simplicity’ narrative has been dropped in recent months.
In its absence, the ECB has resorted to the same old arguments time and again – arguments that only justify the genesis of a new T20 competition not a fourth format of cricket that isn’t played anywhere else in the world.
The problem for Harrison and Graves, of course, is that The Hundred PR is now a much harder sell in 2019 than it would have been when Graves became chairman almost five years ago.
Back in 2015 Graves spoke about a crisis in English cricket. This is why the new T20 franchise competition was apparently necessary. Existing competitions were subtly maligned to convey an image of decline and decay. The picture was one of falling attendances, falling participation, and a sense that county cricket itself was in danger if nothing changed.
In 2019 the ECB are actually launching their new tournament set against a very different backdrop. English cricket is finally growing again. And it’s all happened without The Hundred or indeed any new competition at all. It turns out that the World Cup – finally a taste of live cricket on terrestrial TV – and The Ashes were the shot in the arm that English cricket needed.
This is where Harrison and Graves have finally had to change their previous narrative. Now, instead of arguing that the new competition is there to save English cricket, The Hundred PR has become all about building on this year’s success.
Here’s what Harrison said just two weeks ago at the end of October. It was all about continuing momentum:
The Hundred is an attempt to replicate (the World Cup) and bring it back to our country every year without taking anything away from our precious county environment, to ensure we grow the game of cricket in this country.
We have seen throughout the Cricket World Cup grounds across the country packed to the rafters, 40 per cent of whom were first-time buyers to cricket in this country. The vibrancy, the colours, the noise and energy is something that will live with all of us.
The ECB has also been forced to backtrack when it comes to their existing short-term competition. When asked what’s wrong with The Blast, Harrison has now admitted:
absolutely nothing, it has been a phenomenal format which has an amazing role. It’s a fantastic format with eight consecutive years of growth and we are continuing to invest.
So much for ‘mediocre’ and arguing that T20 cricket in our country had lost its way.
In effect, therefore, The Hundred has essentially become a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist anymore. And the new format itself, as demonstrated above, wasn’t needed to achieve the EBC’s objectives anyway.
So what on earth is the point of the whole thing? One can only guess. Supporters of The Hundred argue that its money is needed to keep counties afloat but this simply isn’t the case.
The truth is that most counties are solvent (partly due to the success of The Blast) and only approximately three or four are struggling. What’s more, there was plenty of money available to help struggling counties out before The Hundred came along. English cricket has been very profitable in recent times.
The only thing that threatens cricket’s financial future is actually The Hundred itself. The project is costing far more than the ECB initially anticipated – which is presumably why Harrison refused to talk about its budget at the DCMS committee – and it’s expected to lose millions in its first few years (if it lasts that long). For the first time in a long time, the ECB had to change its central contracts cycle amidst rumours of cashflow issues.
So once again I ask you. What is the point of the Hundred? It wasn’t to get cricket back on terrestrial television (we’ve proved that wasn’t the case), and it can’t be to make cricket simper either (because it doesn’t). The reality is that it’s a massive financial gamble that’s puts a profitable sport at risk.
The bottom line is this. Whatever argument one could make in favour of The Hundred, that argument would equally apply to a T20 competition. Indeed, every coherent argument the ECB has put forward to justify the new format was previously made when The Hundred was expected to be T20 competition.
Unfortunately cricket supporters are still waiting to hear one single plausible argument as to why a fourth format of the game is required. The Hundred PR machine has had plenty of opportunity to tell us but it can’t.
Therefore, at this point, we have to assume that there isn’t one. Sadly it feels very much like a sugar-fuelled vanity project.
James Morgan
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It’s a badly drawn up and designed venture foisted upon us. The calamity belongs to the ECB and its chairman. No doubt as businessmen they’ve had to tear up their own plans before but this could be a very public failure. Cricket fans aren’t the target audience. You would think they would want a fan base. Even as T20 it cuts across County loyalty. Our cricket is old and tribal. They have chopped up the County teams with the draft. Will it appeal to anyone? The old Rhythms are gone. The ECB have created an ugly monster.
Not sure I agree with you about the Ashes being a shot in the arm that’s solved the problem of a decline of English cricket. Take away the Stokes factor and what have you got in the Ashes that captured the public imagination? Without his one off contribution in that third test the Ashes was no contest, dominated by one man’s less than exciting batting.
The test will be whether clubs and counties get more active interest with new members for next season. Much as I have the new age marketing philosophies of Graves and Harrison they have a good point about needing something different to attract a new generation to the game. When you go to test or county matches how many teenagers do you see? Talk to any county and see how much difficulty they’re finding attracting new talent into the game. Presently Golf attracts more participating teenagers than cricket.
I do take your point, but had the money and the marketing had been put into the blast it would have been better spent. I would even have tolerated the new garish team colours, loud music, exploding bails and fireworks.
The kids can also have a bouncy castle and candy floss. All in all that should bring them along.
The point I’m making is that it could’ve been a T20. The World Cup was more important than the Ashes but this summer showed that there’s nothing wrong with existing forms of the game or even existing competitions. The Blast attracted record attendances this year but the ECB even tried to play this down somewhat, and there were accusations that they massaged the figures to make it seem less popular than it actually was in order to justify The Hundred.
You did actually say James, that the Ashes were the shot in the arm cricket needed.
I don’t see that it matters much whether it’s the Hundred or the Blast that’s more of a success, but if you’re looking for a format to reproduce why not capitalise on the one with record attendances.
The fact remains that cricket has very little interest for the young at present, how many youngsters do you see playing the game amongst themselves compared to a few decades ago, almost none. I know a lot of this has to do with overprotective parents frightened paedophiles are lurking around every corner and the continuing preoccupation with role playing fantasy computer games with the boys, but this is the reality we have to try and break down. There are plenty of kids at Football and Rugby matches, so they are out there to be attracted and red ball cricket does not interest them. So, as I’ve continually said cricket has to adapt to the mores of the time, as it always has done. If this means more shorter format competitions then so be it.
“It turns out that the World Cup – finally a taste of live cricket on terrestrial TV – and The Ashes were the shot in the arm that English cricket needed.”
I said that the world cup AND the ashes were the catalyst, particularly the WC because it was on terrestrial television.
A good scenario would be for T20 to act as a gateway drug for red ball cricket. But I disagree that kids have no interest in red ball at all. My generation were brought up with test cricket on TV and many people saw test matches before they saw an ODI (and T20 didn’t exist back then). The game just needs exposure. Jofra Archer doesn’t need to be wearing pyjamas in order to provide a spectacle of fast bowling.
Yes the game needs short-form matches, I agree with this entirely, but do we need any more? The Blast is incredibly popular and its played all over the country. There is no room in the schedule for a new competition without compromising 50 over cricket and the championship. The cost is just too great.
There’s nothing wrong with red ball cricket Marc. Kids aren’t interested in it because they never see it because its not shown on the tv. If it was, they would be. They were in the 60s, they were in the 70s, they were in 80s, they were in the 90s, they were in the 2000s up until the moment it disappeared. They would be today – we all know its the most exciting and engrossing format of the game. Kids haven’t suddenly become stupid and shallow.
This really isn’t rocket science. I don’t know why people are so desperate to invent all these unlikely stories rather than just admit the obvious truth that taking cricket off FTA tv is 100% of the reason for its relative decline. That’s all it is.
I didn’t say there’s anything wrong with it, I merely commented that it has no attraction to the young. Just because something’s popular doesn’t make it better, just more marketable. I don’t agree that it’s just because it’s not on terrestrial TV either. The TV companies would market it if there was evidence it would attract a significant audience, as that is their remit. I know kids haven’t become more shallow, but they have more immediate interests they can persue that we never did, mostly involving new technology, not physical excertion. The reason county cricket was popular in the fifties was that there was precious little entertainment elsewhere, so people latched onto what they could get. When wartime austerity wore off in the sixties and seventies we saw a decline in attendances amongst a generation who wanted to persue different interests from their parents and it’s been on the decline ever since. We live in a life is loud environment and county cricket just doesn’t fit that scenario. Can you imagine how much time your average teenager would spend on their phone during a day’s county cricket. By the end of the day they’d be complaining they had no charge left.
So to sort of sum up James’s piece:
The ECB have created a competition that basically no one seems to want, for a hidden audience that doesn’t seem to exist (unless it’s on the dark side of the moon), to attract people into the game when they’ve already got a product that does that i.e. The Blast. In doing so they’ve alienated 90% of the fan base and it’s almost become Crickets Brexit. And finally it could well split the game asunder. All for vanity.
I don’t really want to discuss any more, because it’s all been said.
Amen.
One justification the article doesn’t mention is the need for a speedier format that will fit more easily into the TV schedules. Of course this argument is transparent b******s because it can’t explain the singular lack of any effort to speed up T20 over rates or why a T10 league wasn’t the answer. One might suspect the former has something to do with creating space for more lucrative ad breaks to be crammed in while the game is in play. The reason one’s left with is that the 16.66’s designers can copyright the format and make a nice little killing every time it’s played, something the ECB neglected to do when they introduced T20.
BTW, in rugby Saracens are currently having the book thrown at them for breaking salary cap rules on grounds that a salary free-for-all will bankrupt smaller teams. However a salary free-for-all is just how international cricket is organised and destroying smaller teams is exactly what it’s doing. Wouldn’t it be great if the Big Three could be massively fined and stripped of all their trophies!?!
All in all, cricket’s governing principle seems to be that of the US general in Vietnam and his famous line about destroying the village in order to save it.
Yes I’ve been following the Saracens story closely. Unfortunately salary caps don’t expand beyond national borders so I think (although I’m no expert) that this one is dead in the water. It’s strange that county cricket actually has a salary cap. We hear very little about it.
I seem to remember there was a comment around DCMS time that Harrison’s £714k was more than one county’s wage bill for players.
Whilst the BBC, as you say, were on board when it was T20, is there ANY credible explanation for “100” other than to shave a few minutes off for their schedules – what else could it conceivably be? Or is there perceived value in just being different? If so, boy, have they ever got that worng!
The 100 is so confusing because its muddled thinking on top of muddled thinking. Here are 13 examples of stupid, illogical thinking behind the tournament that you often hear parrotted on twitter.
1) They claim the want to improve quality, but are unable to explain why simply creating a premier division of the blast wouldn’t have done that.
2) They claim they want a shorter, faster format for tv, but then put in an additional timeout that means there will be no real difference in time (blast games are only 2hrs 40 mins as it is, the 100 is likely to be 2 hrs 30, but with 40% less cricket, will actually be slower in terms of balls/minute).
3) They claim that the bbc wouldn’t have bought it otherwise, but in fact the bbc signed up to a T20 tournament
4) They claim they’re targeting it at new fans (who they admit don’t know any existing players), but then promote it based on the amount of famous players, which means nothing to the fans they claim they’re trying to attract.
5) They claim that new city based identities are required as that’s what people identify with, but then half the teams aren’t given a city based identity.
6) They claim to be treating the mens and womens game as equals, but then pay the women peanuts and ship them off to play untelevised fixtures in tiny outgrounds in the middle of nowhere.
7) They claim that FTA tv simply won’t show longer format games, but C4 were happy to clear their schedule for a 50 over game at incredibly short notice, proving this nonsense.
8) They claim no-one will watch longer format games even if they were on FTA tv, but 8m people watched a 50 over game, proving this to be nonsense.
9) They claim that the blast is a failure, but actually it draws in bigger total crowds than any other tournament except the IPL (in a country with only a fraction of the population of India)
10) They claim they want to attract audiences from new regions, but then play the games in the same stadia as they’ve always played.
11) They claim they want to tap into the South Asian market, but then hardly sign up any South Asian players.
12) They claim they want to inspire kids to take up the game, but then schedule the games for when they’re all away in France, and the tournament doesn’t even start until after the junior season has finished.
13) They claim that the tournament will save the games finances, but even their own massaged numbers can’t hide the fact that it will make a loss, and this doesn’t even include the potential damage to revenues in the wider game.
Interesting piece, as ever.
I rather like your description of short form cricket as a gateway drug.
I don’t have a real gripe about the format of The Hundred. I would have preferred to have just spent a bit more money on the Blast and suspect it would have served the ECB’s (ostensible) purposes just as well, but I’m neither a marketing guru nor a young person who doesn’t care much about cricket (I’ve already graduated to class As) and I kind of get the “its not for you line”.
What I do object to is having two short form competitions, there simply isn’t room for both in a British summer. We already havea bowdlerised county championship and from, 2020, a downgraded 50 over competition. If The Hundred is so great then it needs to replace 20/20 or at the very least the two should be played concurrently, giving April to July for 50 over and four day cricket.
As for why the ECB is so enthusiastic about The Hundred. Maybe, they worry about a cricket world where 20/20 “franchise” cricket is the dominant format because there’s no real need for a national body in such a situation, no national sides to run no national TV deal to negotiate. If they can come up with a different, more successful format, they’ve sort of proved their relevance.
I agree entirely that the decline of cricket amongst both the young and not so young is mostly because it’s locked behind the Sky paywall. I think the ECB are probably do thick that they think terrestrial TV is still analogue 5 channel, hence no room for long coverage of cricket. Rubbish of course; Ch 4 alone have at least 6 digital platforms that could easily accommodate a days cricket without much interference to their schedule. BBC have umpteen red button channels plus BBC 4 which is off air until 7pm. ITV1,2,3,4 plus platforms they use for pay to view boxing. Channel 5 has at least 3 too. No lack of space, just a lack of application and planning by the ECB