Has The Hundred Finally Found Its Point?

For a competition designed to simplify cricket, The Hundred has spent most of its life being surprisingly difficult to explain.

Is it for kids and women? Is it for broadcasters? Is it for people who think T20 is still a bit too long? Nobody has ever seemed entirely sure.

But as we look ahead to this summer’s Hundred, one thing feels clearer than ever: English cricket is no longer just staging a tournament. It is trying to join a global franchise economy. And the IPL is the shadow over all of it.

That is not necessarily a bad thing.

For years, the IPL has been treated in England with a mixture of admiration, suspicion and mild panic. We like the money, the crowds, the colour and the fact that every match appears to come with enough fireworks to concern local air traffic control. What we have been less comfortable with is the power. The IPL does not behave like a guest in cricket’s house. It behaves like someone who has checked the mortgage payments and realised it might be able to buy the place.

Now, with IPL owners taking stakes in Hundred teams, the relationship has changed. This is no longer English cricket looking across at India’s franchise model from a safe distance. This is English cricket inviting it in, giving it a seat at the table, and hoping it does not immediately ask why everything is called “Northern” or “Spirit”.

The most obvious question is whether this makes The Hundred more exciting. Possibly. The more important question is whether it makes it matter.

Because that has always been The Hundred’s biggest problem. It has had good players, decent crowds, strong women’s cricket, family audiences and the occasional genuinely brilliant game. What it has lacked is jeopardy beyond the month it occupies.

The IPL matters because the franchises matter. They have identities, owners, histories, villains, heroes and fans who behave as though a mid-table league game in April is a constitutional crisis.

The Hundred has not had that yet. It has had teams that feel a little like marketing concepts assembled during a long meeting with too many biscuits.

But franchise ownership changes the equation. If the Oval Invincibles become MI London, that is not just a new badge. It is a statement. It says the team belongs to a global cricket family. It also says, slightly awkwardly, that the most successful team in The Hundred may now be more recognisable through Mumbai than Kennington.

This is where English cricket needs to be careful.

There is a version of this future that works brilliantly. The Hundred gets investment, better players, sharper marketing, bigger audiences and stronger global relevance. The counties get money. The women’s competition gets more attention. Young fans get a product that feels less apologetic and more alive.

There is also a version where English cricket sells the furniture, repaints the house and then discovers it is renting the spare room.

The IPL’s genius is not just money. It is confidence. It knows what it is. It knows who it is for. It knows that sport is entertainment, but also that entertainment needs emotional stakes.

The Hundred has sometimes looked embarrassed by itself. It wants to be new, but not too new. Loud, but not too loud. Cricket, but not quite cricket. A revolution provided nobody important is offended. That will not work in the franchise age.

If The Hundred is going to survive, let alone thrive, it has to stop behaving like an ECB initiative and start behaving like a sporting property people can love, hate, mock, defend and obsess over.

That means stronger identities. Better storytelling. More visible owners. Proper rivalries. A clearer calendar. And, most importantly, a reason to care beyond “it’s on the BBC, quick and the kids quite like it”.

The irony is that The Hundred may finally become interesting because it becomes less uniquely English. That will upset some people. Cricket is very good at being upset. It has been upset about coloured clothing, floodlights, T20, music after boundaries, names on shirts and probably, at some stage, the invention of the sightscreen. But the direction of travel is obvious.

Franchise cricket is not coming. It is here.

The question for The Hundred is whether it can use that energy without losing the things that make cricket in this country worth protecting. Because the IPL has shown the world what modern cricket can become. The Hundred now has to decide whether it wants to be part of that story, or just a slightly shorter footnote.