Joe Root piles pressure on cricket chiefs over Hundred format
Joe Root has piled pressure on the England and Wales Cricket Board and the new Hundred owners to keep the competition’s format.
While ECB bigwig Richard Thompson said the competition would remain 100 balls per innings, fewer than the 120 seen in Twenty20 competitions, the new franchise investors have been mulling a change to the format to create a T20 league which could be more easily packaged with the Indian IPL and South African SA20 – both of which feature significant Indian investment.
Root, however, said “The Hundred is brilliant”, adding that “the best thing about The Hundred is its originality, it’s something completely different and it asks players to look at the game slightly differently”.
Between 49 per cent and 100 per cent of each of the eight Hundred franchises was flogged off earlier this year, with six of the eight deals completely finalised.
Some teams are expected to see changes to their names, while competition-wide alterations could be made relating to television deals, front-of-shirt sponsorships and the utilisation of Indian players.
Hundred a good product
Speaking on The Overlap and Betfair’s Stick to Cricket show, Root said: “When you’ve played a lot of cricket and you’ve got experienced players who can see how a game is going to pan out, then you play this format, it feels like that’s not the case. I think that’s why the guys enjoy it.
“I think it being ‘The Hundred’ is its point of difference and what people like about it. Overseas players, people like Adam Zampa playing one game in the final and says it’s his favourite tournament he plays in.
“That’s what people like, it is different. A lot of it was about targeting a new audience and bringing new people into the game, I think it’s done that exceptionally well.
“But the quality of cricket, you’ve got high-class players, and whenever you’ve got that on good surfaces, you’ve got a good product. So, I think that’s got to be key moving forwards.”