The Hundred will make cricket visible and accessible to young people like me

NATHANIEL TRESISE, 23, says the ECB's new competition - which has attracted substantial criticism from county regulars - will allow young people to discover and understand the sport more easily... and that those in opposition must look to the future

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Young people are a difficult bunch to engage. We live in a world of Love Island, Instagram, Fortnite and YouTube.

This is what cricket has to compete with in the battle for our attention, which is why the concept of The Hundred was introduced. 

It presents cricket in a fresh, new way which will help to make the sport relevant to younger fans and attract a broader audience in general.

In light of this, I’ll come clean and say I believe in The Hundred – I think it will have a positive impact on cricket in England and Wales. 

The Hundred gives cricket an opportunity to step into the limelight and become a mainstream sport again.

As a starting point, 10 matches will be shown live on a primetime BBC television slot, giving cricket free-to-air exposure which will enable it to reach the masses again.

To help people feel an affinity with the teams in The Hundred, they are named after cities – where young people and families either live or want to live.

The cities have taken over from the counties in popular culture thanks to football, music, universities or boundary changes.

^{The Hundred aims to introduce a different audience to cricket} 

No one thinks of Oasis as being from Lancashire or Blur from Middlesex, it’s Manchester and London.

The Blast is a great tournament with a strong, loyal fan base, but does it cut through into mainstream media to engage new fans and grow the game? This is something I believe that The Hundred will do. 

All the talk among The Hundred naysayers is that the ECB wants to try to cull some counties through the new competition, but the quickest way of doing this has come from those same people.

“Fixing” the Blast by splitting it into two divisions will have the exact same impact it has had on the County Championship.

All the money from TV, ticket sales and sponsors would be sucked into the First Division, leaving counties who can’t get promoted rotting in the lower half of the Second. 

Why go down the road of reducing a match to 100 balls?

Well, this idea came from research conducted by the ECB, which revealed that matches were going on too late for families – and that cricket was seen to some as too complicated.

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There has been plenty of talk about the research, but are we seriously saying that these are not sensible arguments?

Blast matches last year were going on till about 10pm, which on a school holiday night is too late for children. These late finishes discourage parents from taking their families to matches or from allowing older children to be out that late on their own.  

As for cricket being too complicated, if you can’t see that you’ve probably spent too long in the game. Go and sit with someone who knows nothing about cricket in front of a scoreboard and ask them to explain it to you!

I do, however, think The Hundred can have a positive impact for traditional county fans.

For a long time, journalists, players and supporters have been rightly bemoaning the fact that County Championship cricket is being pushed to the edges of the summer. 

This issue could be helped by The Hundred, with Ashley Giles hinting at playing the two together. This is something that is simply not possible with The Blast due to the number of players that the tournament uses.

This would help England red-ball players such as Rory Burns, Zak Crawley, Dom Sibley, Jimmy Anderson and Stuart Broad gain valuable match time. It would also give players such as Ben Stokes or Jos Buttler, who play all forms of the game, the choice of playing a Championship match before a Test.

^{Jonny Bairstow at The Hundred draft}

This must be an improvement for county members, who would be able to watch red-ball cricket in the height of the summer.

I strongly feel that Championship cricket should no longer be played at Test grounds in front of more than 20,000 empty seats. It’s a horrible look when compared to the much more festival/community atmosphere generated at county out-grounds. 

Taking two or three rounds of games which are currently played in April and putting them in August is surely the closest thing to a solution there is.

That, and the new popular streaming service of county games, is the best way to grow the County Championship. Obviously, some money would need to be spent on the facilities at the out-grounds to get them up to scratch.

This is a massive opportunity for cricket to try to replicate some of the popularity that football generates through the winter. There is a gap in the calendar for this type of event; one which runs through large parts of the summer and is available to watch for free. 

This is a time to be looking at the bigger picture to see where cricket fits into modern British society rather than looking at our individual needs and preferences or trying to hold on to the past.

Nathaniel runs cricket blog Silly Point

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