Sheffield Cricket Lovers' Society Year Book 2020

6 twitter: @scloverssociety The former Sheffield Collegiate scorer is no fan of the ECB’s new 100-ball tournament, which, she argued, is driving a deep and divisive wedge into the structure of English cricket. She dedicated her talk – the first of the 2018-19 indoor season – to explaining why she is opposed to The Hundred, as the competition has been christened. First of all there is the recurring issue of trying to unearth the Test match stars of tomorrow in a county cricket setting. Elizabeth argued that the introduction of a fourth domestic tournament into an already crowded schedule is hardly helping the County Championship, a large proportion of which is currently shoehorned into the months of April and September. An even worse scenario awaits the Royal London One-Day Cup, she told us. It has been downgraded by the ECB to a ‘development tournament’, played on county outgrounds at the same time as The Hundred (last week of July and all of August). The country’s leading cricketers will not feature in the One-Day Cup and overseas players are being excluded from the competition. Elizabeth was also concerned about the divisions that will occur in county dressing rooms and boardrooms as a result of The Hundred. Ninety- six of the counties’ best white-ball cricketers will be selected for the eight city-based teams and will be paid handsomely for playing. On the other side of the divide, 1st XI also-rans, 2nd XI players and Academy youngsters will be competing in the One-Day Cup. And the financial disparity between The Hundred’s eight Test match venues compared to the other county grounds will become even greater, the result of generous staging fees, and increased hospitality and commercial revenue generated by the new competition. Another worry she forsees is the adverse effect the 100-ball competition will have on the flourishing T20 Blast, which attracted nearly one million spectators in 2018. The Blast is a crucial source of revenue for counties but is destined to lose its high summer slot to The Hundred. If it reverts to Friday evenings it risks losing many of its overseas stars, who might be unlikely to commit to a prolonged T20 tournament. And finally, who will watch The Hundred ? According to the ECB it is not aimed at existing cricket watchers; it is designed to attract a new, and as yet unspecified, audience to the game. Therein lies a problem for Elizabeth – who are these people who currently aren’t interested in cricket but will suddenly come to like it because of a 100-ball competition with new rules, such as 10-ball overs bowled by either one or two bowlers? In her view, you either like cricket in its traditional format or you don’t like it at all. at the crease SPEAKERS 2018-19 BY ROGER ALLUM 1 October 2018 Elizabeth Ammon Times cricket journalist A Hundred not to be applauded? Elizabeth Ammon