Special report: With the BBC’s TV deal ending in 2024 and structural changes being considered, there are fears gains made could be lost
It was a classic slip of the tongue. Speaking to Sky on the opening day of this year’s Hundred, Sanjay Patel, the tournament’s managing director, said “we are all set for the final year”, before hastily correcting himself, “the third year, sorry”.
The Freudian slip is easily enough explained. Months before, the England and Wales Cricket Board had announced that Patel would be leaving.
But the comment arrived as the tournament began under a cloud. The second season, 2022, had been flat, for whatever reason. Many were angry that a brilliant Ashes summer was over before August began, and that there would be no elite red-ball cricket played in a prime month. The rain that beset late July flooded into August, with seven of the first 14 games washed out across the two competitions. The first headline the tournament garnered was unwanted, when Love Island’s Chris Hughes – a curious choice as the BBC’s boundary interviewer – compared Southern Brave’s Maitlan Brown to Barbie.
What made the timing of Patel’s remark most unfortunate, though, was speculation over the Hundred’s future. Since April reports suggested the new ECB chief executive Richard Gould and chair Richard Thompson were plotting a new “bigger and better” path ahead for the divisive tournament, and the wider English game. Five years earlier, when they filled the same roles at Surrey, county cricket’s commercial powerhouse, they were critics of the Hundred. Now in charge, they were publicly supportive of the tournament, but privately exploring ways they could shift its direction. The departure of Patel, highly respected at ECB, was part of this.