{"id":737983,"date":"2026-08-14T17:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T17:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/737983\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T17:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T17:38:12","slug":"the-hundreds-costly-makeover-still-leaves-english-cricket-playing-a-waiting-game-the-hundred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/737983\/","title":{"rendered":"The Hundred\u2019s costly makeover still leaves English cricket playing a waiting game | The Hundred"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a story about English cricket that took flight in the final days of July. A viral clip that prompted headlines around the globe. A cut-through moment for a sport always hunting for them and unrelated to the international game.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for the England and Wales Cricket<\/a> Board, it also had nothing to do with the Hundred, into its sixth edition, and everything to do with a Saltburn CC fielder accused of clicking his fingers.<\/p>\n

The fight for attention continues for the 100-ball competition, which rounds off this weekend after undergoing a hefty makeover. The sale of stakes in all eight teams has brought in Indian Premier League owners, tech bros, Birmingham Phoenix investor Jude Bellingham and substantial paydays for the players.<\/p>\n

The IPL-ification has been hard to ignore, with teams rebranding to MI (Mumbai Indians) London, Sunrisers Leeds and Manchester Super Giants. Cue the quest to develop these fresh identities, some slightly better than others.<\/p>\n

Sunrisers made the early error of sharing a clip of their men\u2019s side singing a new team song, read off sheets of paper, an awkward take on Leeds United\u2019s Marching On Together. Ridicule was followed by the delete button. Traditions take time.<\/p>\n

Trent Rockets \u2013 a brand largely untouched by the investment management firm Cain \u2013 have been the standout side, topping both tables to reach Sunday\u2019s finals at Lord\u2019s. Sophia Dunkley and Ben Duckett have been among the runs but what\u2019s been the secret?<\/p>\n

Beyond the quality of the players there\u2019s the link with Nottinghamshire, according to Mick Newell, director of cricket for the Rockets and the county side. Peter Moores is the men\u2019s head coach of Notts and the Rockets, while Chris Read, who spent 20 seasons as a player at Trent Bridge, runs the women\u2019s side in the Hundred.<\/p>\n

Birmingham Phoenix part owner Jude Bellingham acknowledges the fans during a match at Edgbaston. Photograph: Alun Roberts\/ProSports\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n

\u201cIt definitely was a conscious effort to put people in around the team who know the area, know the club and would make players feel comfortable very quickly,\u201d says Newell. \u201cEven with private investment we\u2019re running it in a pretty similar way to the way we were doing it before.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rockets all-rounder Georgia Adams is full of praise for Newell and Read, having joined after four seasons with Southern Brave. Her fresh start mirrors the changes to the tournament: she reached three Hundred finals at the Brave and captained the side, but was let go as the teams rebooted with an auction after the introduction of private investment. Brave, now associated with the IPL side Delhi Capitals, did not bid for her.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a team that I cared so deeply about,\u201d says Adams. \u201cFranchise cricket, for a lot of people, it\u2019s just walking into an environment, trying your best to perform for the team and leaving. For me, Southern Brave was so much more than that, naturally with the link with Hampshire [whom Adams plays county cricket for].<\/p>\n

\u201cMy initial thoughts were that I probably was a bit pissed off, if I\u2019m honest. A bit of anger but also a bit of disappointment that a franchise that I felt like I did my utmost for didn\u2019t even bid for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Adams says the connection between the Rockets and fans at Trent Bridge has been \u201cepic\u201d and is fully invested in the direction of her new side. But she wonders what impact rebranding elsewhere has had on supporters.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking at the competition, it\u2019s been quite sad. I remember watching a Sunrisers Leeds game and thinking, where is everyone? The ground\u2019s empty. And from our memories of playing at Leeds, it was a tough crowd to be the away team at. It was quite a loud, rowdy place to play your cricket. Maybe with the change of branding, changing of names, changing of ownership, it probably has deterred some fans. Equally, I guess some fans are also following players now.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ECB has said that the number of tickets sold and issued for this year\u2019s tournament was 550,000, 30,000 short of last year\u2019s total. As Adams observes, Sunrisers\u2019 crowds have dropped off significantly from 2025 figures, with an 18% decline in the average attendance for men\u2019s games at Headingley. Positives can be found in Cardiff where Welsh Fire enjoyed their best-ever day of attendance: MI London\u2019s visit brought in a crowd of 11,796.<\/p>\n

The scoreboard displays confirmation of a record crowd for the Hundred men\u2019s match between Welsh Fire and MI London, but other grounds have fared less well. Photograph: Peter Nicholls\/ECB\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The governing body has attributed the drop in crowds to operational changes, with the responsibility for ticket sales switching to the individual teams. It has also pointed to how major Test series have boosted the Hundred\u2019s numbers in the past. The competition\u2019s most well-attended seasons, in 2023 and 2025, directly followed the Ashes and a visit by India, respectively. There has at least been a 7.5% rise in the average broadcast audience on Sky Sports and the BBC.<\/p>\n

So this appears to be a transitional year \u2013 though the same term could be applied to the year before, when the new owners were waiting to take over. So when will we have the complete deal, a tournament that has fully clicked together? Will there need to be another year of transition if it switches to T20 in the future, thus making the name of the entire thing completely irrelevant? And at what point will the actual cricket go full Saltburn and take over the headlines? Sky says its standout piece of social media content from this year\u2019s Hundred is Ravi Shastri introducing Bellingham at a Phoenix game. Six seasons on, we\u2019re still playing the waiting game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a story about English cricket that took flight in the final days of July. A viral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":737984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-737983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}