“That was SO COOL!” What’s cool around here? The aggressively upbeat DJ box? The handsome supply teacher type with the roving microphone whose job is force people to clap and who promises to get your selfie on the big screen, but only if it’s “supportive”?
Perhaps the singer Sapphire is cool, present to perform a live world premiere of her new single during the interval, which she started just as the rain came thrashing down, sending 10,000 people stampeding from the stands as the opening notes rang out. To her credit Sapphire carried on gamely, serenading the empty seats. The new single is called Pessimist. Her last one was In Crisis. Presumably all of these are taken from the forthcoming album Career-Ending Side-Strain.
In fact the answer was none of these. It turns out Ben Stokes is cool. England’s Test captain could be seen wandering towards the Utilita Bowl, cap pulled down, an hour into the opening instalment of the Southern Braves versus Northern Superchargers women-men double-header. It was here that the good thing happened.
Stokes spotted the pair of gawping kids across a mini-roundabout, went across, said hello, signed a piece of paper, then kept on trudging past the otherwise oblivious passersby, leaving a couple of very happy pre-converted fans.
He is, in his own words, “milling around” the Hundred during his injury layoff, present to offer aura, optics, star power. Later in the day he could be seen diffusing his own Big Stokes Energy from the Superchargers bench as the men’s team chased victory, just another part of the tapestry on what was actually a very good day, a day where everything was good, bright, chipper, and undeniably functional.
Come for the Hundred: the Hundred will come for you too. Last week I wrote a column with a line that suggested the Hundred was the worst thing cricket has ever done. To be fair, this was based on an extended totting up of its silly format, cult-like tone, failure to meet its own aims, and the destructive nature of its subsidised scheduling.
But yes, obviously the Hundred isn’t as bad as rebel tours or concussion. It’s better than the recently collapsed Caymans Max 60 League, described as “the Fyre festival of cricket”, as unpaid players fled the islands. So yes. Better than that.
But the article was enough to draw accusations of curmudgeonliness, not getting it, being insufficiently progressive-by-rite and so on. “Yeah. I saw your piece,” was the verdict in the Utilita Bowl press room from one of the Hundred’s warmer followers. Not enjoyed. Read. Let us be clear.
The punishment is this. A day at the Hundred. Or at least, the requirement to talk about the other stuff too. Because the fact is, plenty of people do seem to like this, or are at least willing to consume it. At times here the Rose Bowl was close to four-fifths full, this for a non-international match between two recently invented teams. What is happening here? And is it good?
Even on a grudging lime-green August morning the Utilita is a lovely venue, from woodland rising up behind the tented main stand, to the groovy raised walkways around its sides plastered with wrap stalls and hog roasts and ale bars.
People came rolling into the stands from 10.27am, an orderly conga of bags and shorts and hoodies, the complete English summer day defence system. The stage looked shiny, epic and coherently glammed-up, with the DJ stage cranked at one end and the Sky Sports commentary hutch primly in place, like the world’s most illustrious kebab van.
“Let’s get at it, the Utilita Bowl! Come on let’s go. I can’t hear you! Pump it up!” To be fair to the in-house DJ, who was pretty good all day, 10.56am isn’t the ideal timeslot for the purveying of vibes. But the crowd was still good here, close to 4,000 for the start of the women’s match, and family-dominated, reflecting the school holiday scheduling. What else is going on in Hampshire anyway? What’s On Hampshire recommends Portsmouth Cathedral, the Fordingham reptile exhibition and a Jane Austen tour of Basingstoke.
For once, everything is in favour of this thing actually working, which is not a flaw or a gotcha or evidence of betrayal, but a rare instance of good cricket planning. The lesson is: if you sell it, they will come. If you make it dead cheap, they will come. Why didn’t anyone care enough to work this out before?
From the start the vibe was super-maxed, super-happy, super-up. But the women’s game was also sabotaged by its early start time and by a slow, tired pitch. This is a recurrent problem: 10 for one off 15 balls became 26 for three. Phoebe Litchfield, a brilliant young batter, played one thrilling slash through covers and then chopped on a ball that veered in late.
Cue tongues of fire, booming music, and a slight haze of disappointment. Annabel Sutherland, who has three Test hundreds, scratched about as the ball nibbled and stuck. Hollie Armitage played a late blinder, but also one of those knocks that tells you conditions have eased and you’re about to lose.
There was at least a glimpse of the sublime cover drive of Laura Wolvaardt as the Brave strolled home. The crowd seemed happy enough, engaged enough, jabbed and nudged along by the in-house soundtrack. Is this good? It felt good. It’s hard to argue with a plan being executed.
The issues with the Hundred are the format itself, which is too cramped, too breathless, too mega-dumbed for players to really excel. The gushing tone could be dialled back from desperate and alienating to simply encouraging. Crowding out every other format from the centre of the summer for this still seems strange.
The good things are also pretty obvious in the flesh. The England and Wales Cricket Board has been obliged by its own jamboree to fund and showcase the women’s game properly. People are watching it, consumers rather than fans, who may or may not learn to love this thing, but people all the same.
And this has always been the underlying tension here, a question of ownership. Who is this actually for anyway? A clue arrived the same morning as the Braves versus the Superchargers in the form of an email to every Hundred subscriber warning that “as part of the change of ownership” the Hundred would now be passing your personal data to the franchise owners as part of the sale.
Oh. OK then. But then, this was always the deal. The month of August in England now belongs to a different class of person, not families and virgin eyeballs, but tech titans, investors, finance bros. Taking the money now for a slice of your own tomorrow: this is not a free hit. Something is lost with it, control ceded.
In reality the Hundred is still in its chrysalis phase. It has always been a gateway, if only for private equity to make its way into the summer. How long will the Hundred be the Hundred? How long before the thing itself is junked, expanded and formalised in other directions.
But this was still a good Hundred day. Fun was had, cricket delivered, that weirdly shallow, bolt-on Hundred vibe revved up to 11. By late afternoon the men’s game had produced a genuine thriller, won with a last-ball six from Graham Clark. And in that moment it did feel cool; or at least like a strange, plastic format, product-sport, finding its own kind of moment.
