The Hundred 2023

Some thoughts on the tournament and Phoenix's season...

I’m writing this travelling back from Birmingham after what can realistically only be described as a disappointing tournament on the pitch for the Phoenix. There’s a lot of potential reasons why this was the case with some being unforeseeable and unpreventable but ultimately this is a season where I have learned plenty.

Certainly this has been the case on a personal basis, where in periods of self reflection I have to try and make peace with the things which can and can’t be impacted. It also helped me refine thoughts on what I want to achieve in cricket moving forward and how that can potentially be achieved.

While we didn’t pick up the results we would have liked, there were positives. The two wins against London Spirit and Oval Invincibles were great team performances, and our bowling data as a team was top drawer. Adam Milne was superb again for us and Jamie Smith has been one of the breakthrough players in the tournament.

Also, having the opportunity to work with talented & before peak age players and help them with the usage of data in terms of evolving their game was a personal highlight for me. Definitely plenty of job satisfaction seeing them succeed, whether it’s for us or for the various teams they represent around the world.

Although we managed to beat Oval Invincibles soundly, I do think that at their best they have been the best team this tournament. Certainly with Heinrich Klaasen in their XI earlier in the tournament they looked very impressive. On a personal basis with three Kent players in their squad who are great guys I would like them to lift the trophy this year but I’ll be telling them that it’s just a loan for a year and Phoenix will be back next year to take it off them!

Finally, The Hundred has been criticised by a lot of observers, who generally fit the dynamic of being traditionalists. Because they often refuse to watch matches, they probably don’t see the sheer number of young fans who want to just grab a selfie or an autograph with players like Moeen Ali, Liam Livingstone, Adam Milne and Kane Richardson. I had some friends at the game last night who bought their children, and they were overwhelmed when they managed to pick up Adam Milne’s signature on some of their Hundred products. It’s probably a cliched phrase but this tournament is inspiring the next generation, and the positive effect it’s having on women’s cricket as well is considerable.

The tournament is very much enjoyed by players and it is of a higher standard than the Blast. However, of course, there are things which I would give feedback to the tournament on, and I do feel that the salary bands need to be improved significantly to negate competition from rival leagues, and the pitches need thought too. I would imagine the general dynamic of supporters at matches want to see boundaries, and particularly, sixes, and the pitches haven’t always been conducive to a high volume of these. It would be a shame if teams set up to attack and entertain fans feel like they had no option but to adapt their methodology to play on slow, turning pitches. I’d like to see each venue provide two fresh pitches before the tournament with two home matches played on each, and I think this would go a long way to solving the problem.

Finally, I’m certainly not against the concept of private ownership and it may well be that to pay the market value for players time then this needs to become reality. This is why I struggle to understand people who try to shout from the rooftops that the tournament lost - to use an often quoted figure, £9m - last year. Tell me a major start-up which makes profit immediately, or very quickly.

In fact, I’d go as far to say that if I had £9m to lose, I’d be delighted to do so if I knew that I could then sell the product for several billion, which seems a pretty likely figure based on valuations of recent teams from other leagues with IPL owner involvement (IPL expansion teams, women’s IPL and SA20 teams).