CRICKET AT ITS BEST?

By Suhaas Sabbella

Cricket Best MS 1.jpg

A new mode of play is coming to cricket! ‘The Hundred’ is a freshly formed and brand new form of the sport and features eight teams representing seven places over England and Wales and battle it out in possibly the world’s most popular, traditional sport.

 The tournament was formed to attract many families to the game and inspire and give an interest to children about cricket. This tournament will take place in the summer holidays for young boys and girls for them to be available and allow them to watch the matches live.

 This competition (you may have had a hint of the format because of the title) has an innings of 100 balls per team and like many other formats of cricket such as T20, the side with the most runs will obviously win. A bowler can bowl a maximum of 20 balls and each side has a free two-and-a-half minute timeout which they may use at any point of the game. The matches should be fast and quick and after the end of one innings, the next will soon commence instead of long breaks for food, tactics and anything else to fulfil a team’s needs. BBC will feature 10 men’s matches and eight women’s matches and both finals as well as the BBC sport website featuring commentary and live streaming.

Eight teams feature in this tournament. The teams are Trent rockets, Southern Brave, Welsh Fire, Oval Invincible, Birmingham Phoenix, London Spirit, Manchester Originals and Super Northern Chargers. These teams were each given one prime England test player and a few other players based in England. To find out more and see the teams in full, go to https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/50109006. In my opinion, I believe Southern Brave will do well in this tournament will the lights of David Warner, Andre Russell and Jofra Archer, they may be balanced in both bowling and batting.

 ‘The Hundred’ eyes a huge success in attracting many others into cricket of all ages. This may be a great opportunity for young children to play this sport and thoroughly enjoy. It may also be good for the players involved as its sets them up for future tournaments which their country is competing in.