The Hundred shows Tom Harrison and the ECB putting all of its eggs into one basket – will the gamble pay off?

For a competition that doesn’t yet exist The Hundred – if, as expected, that is what it will eventually be called – has caused an awful lot of consternation.

Since being announced in April, information about the new 100-ball format has leaked gradually, like a broken tap, with each drop prompting more questions than the last.

And while we still don’t have a name, teams, players or sponsors as the summer of 2020 start date edges closer, we do now have some word from those making the decisions at the top of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Chief executive Tom Harrison stuck his head above the parapet for the first time on Monday, unveiling a new five-year strategy document echoing the London 2012 Olympics with the title “Inspiring Generations”.

While the 35-page plan for the period of 2020 to 2024 covers the broad topics of widening the sport’s appeal, safeguarding its future and encouraging growth at the grassroots level, everything is tied into what Harrison carefully termed “The New Competition”.

The ECB has set aside £180m over five years to fund the format, which will squeeze into English cricket’s domestic schedule alongside the T20 Blast, One-Day Cup and County Championship.

For now that’s about all we know. More details are expected soon after the first-class counties, who all attended Monday’s meeting, sign off on the playing conditions.

Cricket will face many challenges in the future and The New Competition is being presented as a silver bullet – a way to simultaneously generate revenue, appeal to both new and existing fans, diversify and change perceptions. It’s a tall order.

“[The competition] addresses three key principles: time, complexity and the perceptions of cricket that are out there,” Harrison said. “It is designed to do a certain job for a certain period of the season. The bottom line is that growth over the next few years is fundamentally important to us as a game.”

One of the biggest and most frequently aired frustrations is that the new tournament is simply not wanted by fans. Previously the ECB’s rebuttal to that line of argument was that it wasn’t aimed at existing fans, but at attracting new ones.

This is clearly a noble intention, with the ECB’s new plan showing 82 per cent of their 10.5m followers are men, 94 per cent are white and their average age is 50.

But weary of alienating traditionalists further, Harrison has backtracked from former ECB director of cricket Andrew Strauss’s assertion that the target audience was “mums and kids” and stated the net was being cast wide enough to fit anyone and everyone.

“The new competition is being designed to appeal to cricket fans first and foremost, but then it’s also for a broader audience,” he said.

There are certainly existing problems which need to be addressed, but is launching an entirely new competition with a slightly altered point of difference into a crowded market you already control really the answer?

Although Harrison insisted the T20 Blast “can coexist with the new competition and both can flourish” because “the market can take further growth” he must be aware of the risk that comes with putting all of your precious eggs into a single basket made of an untested material.

Further details are of course eagerly awaited. But having spent the last nine months giving the impression of making things up as they go and assiduously applying the mantra that no idea is a bad idea, the ECB is approaching crunch time.

“It’s really, really important that we demonstrate as a major sport in this country that we have the capacity to grow, the intention to grow and the ambition,” said Harrison.

The ambition is undoubtable. The intention is worthy. But the capacity is a gamble.