The Hundred set for change as new season approaches
After several months of detailed negotiations the England and Wales Cricket Board have finally confirmed the sale of stakes in six of the eight franchises.
The two remaining deals, for Trent Rockets and Oval Invincibles, are also inching closer to the line, with ECB chiefs confident they will soon be signed off.
A total of £520million is being ploughed in to the sport and on Thursday the governing body began the process of sharing the spoils, with each of the 18 first-class counties receiving a £400,000 down payment with the promise of plenty more to come.
Hosts can expect a minimum of £18m, a figure Yorkshire, Lancashire and Glamorgan have already topped up to varying degrees by selling portions of their own stake, with non-hosts set to receive around £25m.
And with the new money comes a new chapter for the competition.
The fifth edition, which starts next week, will be the last before a radical overhaul. The ECB expect at least three of the teams to be rebranded, with Manchester Originals set to align with Lucknow Super Giants, Northern Superchargers tied up with Sunrisers Hyderabad and the Oval Invincibles likely to become the latest team in the 'MI' stable affiliated to Mumbai Indians.
In addition, there is an acceptance that the 100-ball format is up for debate. While the reduction in playing time has appealed to domestic broadcasters, it has not caught on in other territories and there is an appetite to explore reverting to a standard T20 structure.
Other matters, including increased salary caps and a move from a draft system to an auction, will also be looked at with a newly-formed Hundred board sending any recommendations to the ECB board for approval.
Vikram Banerjee, managing director of the Hundred, said: 'It would be slightly odd to bring all these great people in and leave it as it is.
'There are things the tournament has done brilliantly that we want to hold on to, and the core DNA of the tournament will carry on, but we'll look to supercharge it.
'You want to see innovation and growth in new things. Other people will have great ideas and I'm looking forward to seeing what they are.
'(Moving to T20) is one of the things that will be discussed. At the moment it's the Hundred format and that will remain for now but let's see where we get to in the long term.'
ECB chief executive Richard Gould also made it clear that if a global Champions League gets off the ground, the governing body would be keen to send the winner of the Hundred rather than a county from the Vitality Blast.
'There might be some pushback, but that's a debate to be had,' he said.
'If there's a Champions League format it would be a Hundred team going forward. Of course we'd want to be involved at the earliest opportunity.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
11 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Fears that London house price fall will spread through UK
Fears are growing that a downturn in the prime London property market may spread across the country as a recent rise in stamp duty forces sellers to lower their asking prices. Evidence suggests the ultra-rich are renting rather than buying mansions in the capital to avoid the hated tax. Stamp duty is paid by buyers when they buy a property and in April two key thresholds were changed – meaning most homebuyers now pay it. Property portal Zoopla found that 83 per cent of buyers would pay stamp duty if they bought a home today, compared to 49 per cent before April. This has led more buyers to negotiate a price cut to compensate for the extra tax. Some 951,000 now pay the levy. That is still below a recent peak of 1.2million but the figure is set to rise sharply as more people are dragged into the tax net. More than a third – or £4.5billion – of the money raised by stamp duty comes from property deals in the capital. In London, where property prices are higher than the rest of the country, it now costs home movers up to £2,500 more than before April if they buy an average house costing £532,449. But the impact of the rise is most keenly felt in central London locations where prices are being slashed by up to 30 per cent to attract foreign buyers. The stamp duty charge on a £20million mansion in Belgravia or Mayfair is £2.3million for a UK purchaser. For a person not resident in the UK, acquiring a second home in the city, the bill is about £3.7million. This used to be seen as the price of admission to the London lifestyle. But now even the mega-rich are baulking at the bill. Property experts say the international set are now preferring to rent not buy in London. 'The annual rent on a £20million pad would be about £570,000,' said Neil Hudson of the Built Place consultancy. 'On that basis, if you were a UK purchaser, you could rent for four years for what you would have to pay in stamp duty alone.' There are concerns the downbeat mood in central London could spread nationwide. 'At the height of the boom in 2015, London's properties became overpriced and have been largely moving sideways ever since,' said Richard Donnell, head of research at Zoopla. 'This is bad news for the whole market since London has been the engine of house price growth, with the effects rippling out to other regions.'
Daily Mail
41 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
GARY KEOWN: A weakened squad, a manager sounding alarm bells all over again and a palpable sense of chaos on the horizon, how HAS it come to this for Celtic?
Weaker than they were at the turn of the year, no new signings on the radar, putting silly lowball offers into other clubs when there is a pressing need for new players and with a manager now actively calling out the board in public and revealing that he hasn't been offered a new deal with his current contract having less than a year to run. We are now beyond just taking it for granted that everything is going to be all right on the night at Parkhead and very definitely into the realm of asking the question on the lips of more and more fans as this transfer window rumbles on: What the heck are Celtic playing at?
Daily Mail
41 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Fresh boost for Nigel Farage as Britain's top firms book slots at Reform conference
Labour 's panic over Reform deepened last night amid fears that big businesses are following voters and increasingly supporting Nigel Farage 's party. One Cabinet minister confessed to The Mail on Sunday that many leading companies will now attend Reform's high-profile autumn conference in Birmingham. It came as Mr Farage insisted yesterday that his own health was fine, dismissing talk that his lifestyle and relentless schedule were taking their toll, and blaming suggestions to the contrary on rumours spread by Labour and Tory rivals 'because it's the last card they've got'. He joked that he doubted the British Medical Association 'would hold me up as a pin-up boy' but declared: 'I'm feeling good.' However, he later admitted that he was trying to 'moderate with age'. All the parties are currently gearing up for the autumn conference season, with Labour's gathering in Liverpool expected to dwarf the Conservative event in Manchester. Traditionally, conference attendance by major corporate leaders tends to be highest at whichever party is in power, with the official Opposition party reduced to the second-best showing. But one leading Labour minister privately forecast that Reform was likely to upend that tradition this year, saying all the major businesses they had spoken to had said they would buy a stand at the Reform event in Birmingham. The minister said: 'They say they have to. It came as Mr Farage insisted yesterday that his own health was fine, dismissing talk that his lifestyle and relentless schedule were taking their toll, and blaming suggestions to the contrary on rumours spread by Labour and Tory rivals 'because it's the last card they've got' The forecasts come after Sir Keir Starmer made plain that even though Reform had only four MPs, Mr Farage's party – which is leading in recent polls – was Labour's main enemy at the next General Election 'They said that it's the polling numbers – it's making everyone feel they can't miss it this year.' That has stoked Labour fears over the momentum Mr Farage's party is likely to get from the conference season. One Labour source said: 'Business leaders want a presence at Reform partly because they are an unknown – they want their teams to get more detail on policy.' The forecasts come after Sir Keir Starmer made plain that even though Reform had only four MPs, Mr Farage's party – which is leading in recent polls – was Labour's main enemy at the next General Election. Last night there were claims that Labour in the North West was seeking to hire a campaign worker to help save Cabinet ministers Jonathan Reynolds and Angela Rayner from losing their Commons' seats to Reform at the next election.
