Two needed off five, with a record crowd watching on at Lord’s. All-rounder Danielle Gibson, just 22 years of age, is on strike for her first ball in her debut series for England, nerves surely there, but the scene not unfamiliar. She has already spent two seasons calling this place home for London Spirit in the Hundred.
Out comes the ball from Jess Jonassen, as does a reverse-sweep from Gibson, the boundary sealing a 2-1 T20 international series win for England in the Women’s Ashes. The player of the match is Alice Capsey, though, the teenager having earlier blitzed 46 off 23 balls. She made a half-century on this ground for Oval Invincibles two years ago as a 16 year old: a match-winning Ashes knock hasn’t come out of nowhere.
While the most divisive subject in English cricket returns for its third outing next week, the tournament’s footprints have been all over the Women’s Ashes over the past month.
The Hundred has provided a platform for talents such as Capsey and Lauren Bell at the biggest venues, then sent them into international cricket where little has changed. Here, too, they have succeeded. Here, too, the public has arrived, most certainly led by the Hundred. According to the England and Wales Cricket Board, attendances at this Women’s Ashes were four and a half times more than those in 2019.
“I think the Hundred is probably a reason why we’ve seen the crowds we’ve had in the Women’s Ashes,” says Charlotte Edwards, the former England captain and now head coach of Southern Brave’s women. “Young players now are used to playing in front of big crowds and the expectation that comes with that. Someone like an Alice Capsey is a great example – she’s played in two Lord’s finals then goes out at Lord’s in an Ashes game and looks like she’s so at home.”
This has been the headline success of the tournament, which starts on Tuesday, seamlessly fitting into the ecosystem of the women’s game. Deliver in regional cricket, get a Hundred gig and then you’re off to England duty. The overseas players aren’t bad either, even if the payday is far more rewarding in India at the Women’s Premier League. South Africa’s Marizanne Kapp will be gunning for a third consecutive title with the Invincibles, India’s captain Harmanpreet Kaur is about, too. Late injuries to Australia’s Ellyse Perry and Alyssa Healy have put a dampener on things but there’s still quality here. This thing is working.
But the debate over whether the competition should exist at all – a constant since the ECB announced the arrival of a 100-ball tournament five years ago – rumbles on. The men’s edition is a little harder to shout about, its status still hard to unpick. Is this just the Blast with a few extra licks of paint?
Four tournaments in the domestic calendar has led to an uneasy squeeze, the One-Day Cup once again a sideshow this year. Mason Crane, leg-spinner for Hampshire and London Spirit, is resolute in how enjoyable it has been playing in the Hundred – “It’s tough to say anything apart from it’s been brilliant” – but acknowledges missed opportunities elsewhere. “I haven’t played 50-over cricket for Hampshire since 2019. And that’s the only sort of thing that it takes away from.”
Other parts of the world have caught up since the Hundred’s inception, installing their own leagues and crowding the calendar. Major League Cricket in the United States may not overlap this year, but it has already signed up some of the world’s best and an expansion down the line – powered by the financial might of IPL franchise owners – invites a serious challenge. Whoever says the bigger number will get the bigger player.
It’s been a complicated off-season for the Hundred. Late last year the ECB’s chair, Richard Thompson, confirmed that an offer of private investment into the tournament had been tabled but dismissed, with the governing body playing the long game. “We are two years in,” he said. “There’s no possibility that after two years a tournament could be worth what it could be really worth in three, four or five years’ time. To sell the summer would need to be an extraordinary amount of money.”
It would have to be billions, not millions. Yet in April noises suggested that the end was nigh, with reports that the men’s tournament was in line to be scrapped and turned into a new T20 competition. Cue a strident retort from Richard Gould, the ECB’s chief executive and, like Thompson, once a critic of the competition when he was at Surrey.
“We have invested very heavily in the Hundred over a number of years, both emotionally and financially,” Gould told The Final Word podcast. “We are not going to take the Hundred out; we are going to make it bigger and better.”
The signals feel slightly mixed, the level of commitment hard to nail down: is this our saviour or an inconvenience that needs ditching? Adding to the confusion is how to look at this year’s scheduling. No clashes with England’s fixtures gives the Hundred breathing space across August, a real chance for there to be a singular focus on the competition.
Or maybe it will suffer an Ashes hangover, straight on the day after the scheduled finish at the Oval, the traditionalists in a rage because they will not see a Test match for the rest of the summer.
For all of the quibbling, however, there is still something stirring here, perhaps something to be a little patient with. “I played in South Africa this winter [at the SA20], and every ground the crowds were full,” Crane says. “And all the players were saying how that just hasn’t happened for years and years. It didn’t at all feel dissimilar to the Hundred.
“That’s what the Hundred is all about as well. Kids are enjoying themselves and it’s almost like the gateway drug into the game.”
