LONDON: British cricket takes steps into unknown to the launch of a hundred, 100 new balls per side format, on Wednesday.
Cricket already has several well-established professional formats at the domestic and international level – first-class game, which includes five-day tests, 50 overs per one match one day and twenty matches.
But even though twenty20 was pioneered as a professional sport in England, the British and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) believed that the format was even shorter needed to attract a new, younger and more diverse audience in ethnically.
One hundred did go with six traditional balls, even though the former England captain Michael Vaughan tweeted: “Reminder that a hundred will only be a cricket game ..
New rules …
some of the best players …
playing against the best …
!!! What is not liked …
this is just a cricket …
I don’t get all hatred.
“But instead of the format, it is the effect of the potential knock-on of a hundred who worry a lot in British cricket.
Instead of relying on current district settings, one hundred will display eight specially made franchise teams – all displays the side of the man and women.
Indeed, a tournament that has been billed by a critic as “an effort to reduce the number of districts with stealth”, will begin with Mandiri women’s matches, between Oval Invincibles and Manchester documents at the Oval in South London.
One hundred was intended to begin by 2020 but the launch was delayed by the Coronavirus pandemic.
And with Covid-19 is still a factor, many big players who are expected by the ECB will take their parts, with David Warner and Glenn Maxwell, New Zealand, Kane Williamson, Kagiso Rabada and Pakistan Shah Afridi who are missing from men’s events and Meg Lanning Australia, Ellyse Perry and Alyssa Hialy are no longer involved in women’s competition.
Derbyshire recently had to cancel their last two matches in a popular T20 explosion because the pandemic meant they could not establish XI which was quite strong.
And with some of the first choice players now diverted to a hundred while the existing district program continues, there are concerns other outbreaks can play chaos with a schedule.
The ECB was accused of being a replacement when saying that one hundred was intended for “mother and children”, the conclusion of cricket was too complicated for them to understand.
But after using most of the reserves of £ 70 million ($ 96 million) about marketing, the ECB could be said to be unable to fail.
Some matches will be broadcast on terrestrial television, with cricket which mostly disappears from free air coverage to the UK since ash 2005 – even though it is the ECB decision.
However, ECB Chief Executive Tom Harrison believes a hundred will provide important income and profiles for the survival of British crickets.
“Before you judge what it carries, you must judge what might happen, we don’t have it,” he said.
“You have to look at the other side of it.” It is a scary environment, actually.
It’s not a free TV and it is mostly investing into a game that we won’t bring.
“He added:” We just need to make sure, behind our mind always, it is that our sports health depends on two things in a very significant way.
“Whatever we can do to balance a huge dependency to keep us safe and safe as a sport, to make us invest in the things we love – district cricket, cricket test, international cricket, championship cricket four days, has a four-day championship 450 Pro Play Men’s Cricket – They are really important for our long-term survival.
“One hundred completely sank in that strategy to fulfill all of these things.”