The Hundred has been the Pinata of English cricket for god knows how long but is there a world where it is actually doing some good. Don’t get me wrong the scheduling of it, blocking out the whole of August, leaves a lot to be desired but judging from the crowd at the opener it has achieved cut through. Let’s have a look at the good, the bad and the ugly of the Hundred.

THE GOOD

The audience is different, it’s not your traditional male, pale and stale crowd, but instead a varied mix of families and cricket newbies. With long queues for the woman’s toilets and food stands instead of the bar. The Cricket District lads, two cricket Youtubers, are playing some blue bat cricket on the grass behind the famous old pavilion. It is a gentle but warm atmosphere fitting of any cricket match with a crowd of 15,640. This is a crowd size that you would not believe would be in for a game of woman’s cricket, if you had told anybody five years ago. The standard is also high with brilliant batting from world superstars Meg Lanning, Grace Harris and Cordelia Griffith all hitting the ball incredibly cleanly. It is also a great opportunity for brilliant domestic talent on show with Issy Wong, Alice Capsey and Ryana Macdonald-Gay all impressing.

There was also the performance of popstar Mimi Webb at the interval of the double header. With over 1.9 million monthly streamers on Spotify and 282,000 followers on Instagram she is a good get for the Hundred and was posting about her performance beforehand. This won’t move the needle with, David the 40 year old accountant, but could potentially get young girls and boys into the game who thought it was not for them beforehand. There has been good games since the opener as well in the men’s competition with the Fire and Spirit battling out a thriller, mainly thanks to Jonny Bairstow’s heroics with the bat.

THE BAD

Everyone knows that it is affecting the schedule of the test summer. When you juxtapose the England India test series to the Green Team (Oval Invincibles) pulverizing the Blue Team (London Spirit) the difference in product is stark. The whole ground feels nothing and the viewer gets nothing out of it either and the players feel the malaise of another franchise T20 competition.

Another issue is the geography, if you live in Cornwall, Durham or any other County without a franchise, the only available cricket comp is the Metro Bank 50 over comp or in another word Premier 2s cricket which again no one seems particularly bothered about.

The Vitality Blast has also suffered as a result of the Hundred with lower crowds and it not appearing to be part of Sky’s coverage going forward. The Middlesex v Sussex group game on a Thursday night in May could only bring in 8,000 fans with the top tier closed. The Blast a once popular competition now is like when Chris Woakes came out to bat in the final innings at India, plucky and courageous and we really wanted it to succeed but in all our hearts we knew it would fail.

The final issue is the layout of the game. The whole brand and how the game looks on the screen is completely different to any type of cricket that is shown anywhere in the world. With runs and balls counting down on the screen, it is simple to understand but if fans are taken in by this and want to watch more cricket outside of the Hundred, they will have to get completely used to a new layout. The concept of overs are not mentioned, which in a day and age where we get spoon fed our information is likely to put some fans off, My final point on the layout is if you looked at any screen in the Oval in the second innings you would not have seen the Invincibles actual score on any screen, just a count down to a target, which blew my mind.

The Ugly

The Spirit choosing to show the in house DJ popping with the two Hundred presenters on the big screen while the home were 70-9 was certainly an interesting choice. If this was done in any other sporting arena the booing would have been heard south of the river. This could change next season with the investment into the competition meaning that the production company will not just be a centralised sports entertainment gloop that does nothing to create support for teams.

Either way the ECBs baby is here too stay and we will have to get used to that as fans and hope that it will improve, or just as with many things we just become numb to flashing lights and noise getting washed away in the sport that we love.