{"id":529359,"date":"2026-03-09T18:50:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T18:50:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/529359\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T18:50:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T18:50:12","slug":"the-hundred-grace-ballinger-on-being-part-of-the-competitions-player-auction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/529359\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hundred: Grace Ballinger on being part of the competition&#8217;s player auction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Not all uncertainty is negative.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In many ways this new beginning will have an excellent impact on cricket in England and Wales.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Privatisation of The Hundred has already generated <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/cricket\/articles\/cz7g9w72848o\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a3520m for the game,<\/a> around \u00a345m of which has been promised to be invested in grassroots cricket.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">All 18 counties also received a significant sum of money to fuel the domestic game. This investment is expected to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/sport\/2025\/jul\/15\/hundred-share-sale-saved-six-counties-collapse-cricket-report\" class=\"ssrcss-18834jl-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">save as many as six counties from financial collapse,, external<\/a> according to the Leonard Curtis Cricket Finance Report.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Salary pots have also grown significantly &#8211; the women&#8217;s pot has doubled from 2025, and now sits at \u00a3880,000, while the men&#8217;s pot has seen a 45% increase to \u00a32.05m.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The prospect of earning over your annual domestic wage for less than a month&#8217;s work is now very real for many English cricketers, particularly in the female game. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Out of those already signed, the highest English earners have been bought for staggering amounts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">England men&#8217;s white-ball captain Harry Brook will earn \u00a3465,000 for the month-long tournament, while women&#8217;s international mainstays Nat Sciver-Brunt and Lauren Bell have been paid \u00a3140,000 each. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It is less simple for players in the auction, who have been tasked with valuing themselves at a reserve price. This is the minimum you are willing to be sold for. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">If multiple teams then wish to enter a bidding war for a certain player, their wage will increase incrementally per bid. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In the women&#8217;s competition, the bands sit at \u00a315,000, \u00a327,500, \u00a337,500, and \u00a350,000. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The men&#8217;s bands start at \u00a331,000, before increasing to \u00a350,000, \u00a375,000, and \u00a3100,000.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Valuing yourself at the correct price can be somewhat difficult when the competition has essentially been reborn &#8211; salaries from previous years are not comparable, and since this auction is the first of its kind, nobody really knows how it will play out.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Players will know their fate soon enough, with the inaugural auctions being held on 11 March (women&#8217;s) and 12 March (men&#8217;s), characteristically hosted at the iconic Piccadilly Lights in central London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Not all uncertainty is negative. In many ways this new beginning will have an excellent impact on cricket&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-529359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}