Crisp packet kits, dodgy cartoons and Bairstow in Wales- The Hundred gets off to a shaky start

The launch of the ECB’s new flagship competition, The Hundred, was never going to go down well with every cricket fan across the county. There are no representatives for the West Country, Durham fans would have to travel to Yorkshire to see their representatives play, and the team names were questionable. Yet still, Thursday’s launch fell flat. 

We’ll make it clear now, this will be the highest quality domestic cricket tournament that has ever been played in England. The home side’s best players will only be available for a few games, but that doesn’t matter with some of the overseas talent on show. Chris Gayle, Steve Smith, and Andre Russell are amongst the vast array of superstars to have registered for the draft in a fortnights time. 

The main issue to be sorted in Thursday’s launch was the distribution of England’s red-ball contracted players. Most of these were rather predictable, the Oval Invincibles picked up Sam Curran, Birmingham Phoenix went for Chris Woakes, and the Manchester Originals got Jos Buttler. 

However, it was a different story for the Northern Superchargers, as the Leeds-based side ignored Yorkshire duo Joe Root and Jonny Bairstow and plumped for Durham’s Ben Stokes. It makes sense, because there is perhaps no cricketer better, or more marketable in England, than Stokes, but it does leave a bit of a bad taste that two players so closely associated with Yorkshire will be playing for rival sides. Bairstow will play for Welsh Fire, while Root will play for the Trent Rockets. 

There will be Yorkshire representatives at Headingly in Adil Rashid and David Willey, who have been picked as the local icons. It’s a different story at Nottingham’s Trent Rockets, who went for the Outlaw’s Harry Gurney and Alex Hales. For a team that is supposed to represent Leicestershire and Derbyshire as well, there isn’t too much for fans of either of those sides to get excited about. This tournament is supposed to bring a new audience to cricket, but that doesn’t mean we should just forget about the old ones.

And then on to pièce de résistance, the kits. The first reveal was a picture released by the ECB which appeared to show Jofra Archer wearing a packet of Pom-Bear, Chris Woakes dressed as Butterkist popcorn, and Nat Sciver modelling a fetching Skips number. We all knew that KP were the competition’s main sponsor, but I don’t think any of us thought it would be this far to the forefront. 

This is a tournament that is being targeted at a new, younger, audience. Are we sure that for a competition that is trying to get young children into cricket, the best thing to do is advertise a host of sugary, unhealthy, snacks? Even if we were to do so, why give them such prominence? With the designs of the kits, the players are just walking billboards for KP Snacks. Which parents are going to buy those shirts for their kids? And this is without mentioning that they are, quite frankly, horrible to look at. 

The PR disaster went a bit further with the announcement of the team’s picks, presented with photos of the players, with added cartoon versions of the kits, which resembled something designed by a ten-year-old. Surely, someone, anyone, at the ECB, could have looked and said ‘this isn’t a good look’?

Without a doubt, there will be some quality cricket when The Hundred comes around, but some of the marketing has been simply laughable. It was originally given the slogan “Every Ball Matters”. Is this to suggest that in longer forms of the game that not every ball matters? Are we to believe we watched the World Cup Final, perhaps the greatest final of any sport of all time, and believe there were stages of it that didn’t matter?  

The debate about The Hundred will rage on, well into the tournament getting underway in nine months time, but in the ECB’s case, they’ve not got off to a great start.