“The 100” is the working title of the new proposed T20 league by the ECB. Although it isn’t T20. Instead it will be 100 balls, or 15 overs plus a ten-ball over. According to the ECB this is to make it simpler in order to attract a new audience. Really, this is just as complicated as any limited overs cricket, but with an extra rule regarding how the ten-ball over will be handled. The only actually important thing this format is is half an hour shorter. Good for a TV broadcast that wants to be over by a certain time – unless it rains. Or the over rate is too slow. Or any of the other countless things that can delay a cricket match happen. So cricket will have another format to contend with.
I also don’t see how this will really introduce any budding new cricket fan to other forms of the game that aren’t already accomplished better by other formats. With T20 you can tell someone to try one day cricket, “it’s like that, but it lasts a whole day!” Or even try a Test, “they each bat twice and it lasts five whole days!”. Instead, why not try a T20? “It’s half an hour longer, and there isn’t a ten-ball over” er, what exactly is the point?
You wouldn’t see other sports succumbing to the pressures of TV scheduling in such oddly compromising ways. Sorry lads, the football match has to be 68 minutes and 45 seconds this week as it’s on ITV so they want an extra couple of ad breaks. I do concede the cricket is inherently more challenging for broadcasters than other sports due to its length, and I’m not saying nothing about cricket should ever possibly be changed. I’m just not sure if this is the right change. Is that half an hour really the straw breaking this camel’s back? Could matches not simply start half an hour earlier if you need them to be done by 9 so badly? And it certainly isn’t about making the game more understandable to initiates as it will require the addition of at least one new rule. So instead, why not make it ludicrously more complex and give entertainment that way? Here are a few of my suggestions:
The Accumulator
Any gimmick needs a good name, here is mine. If batting first, every boundary you score you deduct one ball you’ll have to bowl. Score ten boundaries? You only bowl 90 balls when it’s your turn. Lose a wicket and you’ll have to bowl an extra five balls. When batting second, each boundary deletes the last ball from your opponents innings, and the runs they scored with it. Each wicket you lose deducts five balls from the end of your innings. How many balls are left to be bowled at any stage of the match? Who knows. But something is happening all the time, Exciting™!
The Last Chance Saloon
For our ten-ball over why have it be something so dull as just an extra four balls for a bowler to deliver? No, instead, each ball will be bowled by a different player. And each ball faced by a different batsman! Wicket-keepers are excluded because. Each team secretly chooses who will come up next and then they face off. The mind games of who will choose who, the tactics are endless.
Catches win matches. All catches
Crowd catches now count too. Hit a six into the crowd and they catch it? That’s six and out. Backyard cricket rules here. Catches on the boundary where one person catches it and flings it back into play for another person to catch? That’s two batsmen out. I’m undecided as yet if it should be the striker and non-striker or the striker and next incoming batsman. Perhaps the crowd could vote on this – audience participation is always good.
With these changes I think the ECB will have finally hit upon the right balance of gimmick, incomprehensibility and pointlessness they crave. I think it’s probably a good idea they’re trying to do something to differentiate “The 100” from the T20 blast, and it’s certainly a good thing they’re putting cricket on free-to-air TV. But I’m not sure an additional limited overs competition when the T20 blast is improving every year is necessary, and I’m not sure “The 100” is the solution to format problems.
A genuine solution which obviously won’t happen and which has its own great difficulties would be to alter the existing T20 competition to fulfil some more of these requirements. How about splitting the competition into divisions like current county championship, eight in the first and ten in the second. And then why not change the way players are contracted more along the lines of the IPL, so each franchise retains a set number of players and then an auction is held to acquire the remainder including up to three international players per team (as per the proposed “100” rules). You could keep the desired eight teams for the televised programme, the other ten could still take part, probably with increased appeal in any case, and potential promotion to the televised portion of the competition next year. This would probably attract a lot of its own complaints from the counties, the fans, and just about anyone – as any changes do. But, I think it would work a lot better for the counties, the ECB, the fans, the players, the growth of cricket, and just about everything else than “The 100”. I’ll still watch it, and it’ll probably be very entertaining – but is this really the best they could come up with?
Diamond Duck Deliberations 