GLAMMY

[Kind of Blue]

Ended up watching the whole of the first Hundred game and, first and foremost, it was a very good game of cricket which, for much of the time, was of a high standard with the Manchester wicketkeeper proving as accomplished as Sarah Taylor (that's a big compliment!) and better than many in the men's game - Glenn Phillips, who'll be playing for Welsh Fire in the Hundred, has, rightly, been lauded for his batting displays for Gloucestershire, but he was pretty hopeless as a stumper in their televised game with Somerset this week.

It's strange that the women's game can produce superb wicket keepers and yet the standard of catching falls so far below the men's game. It's hard to see why this should be, because strength isn't much of a factor in that department of the game, but last night's match was decided by Manchester dropping three pretty straightforward catches and it was hardly unique to this one game - I've seen some right dolly catches go down in previous women's matches I've watched.

As for the format, I didn't notice it much because it was a watchable match that I quite got into, but, thinking about it, it didn't seem too much different to a T20 game and I'm left thinking that I can't see why someone who wasn't converted to cricket by T20, will be by the Hundred..

I only watched towards the tail end of the second innings and I must say I agree with you. The only thing it took me anytime to adjust to was the way they presented the scoring on the screen, which was hardly an effort either.

Otherwise it felt pretty much like a t20 game and I don’t see how that’s any easier for the uninitiated to understand and enjoy. As such, it’s pretty inoffensive in and of itself but does have a feel of the emperors new clothes about it.

It did beg the question to me why so much money has been pumped into it - as opposed the county system and/or grassroots facilities - or why haven’t the ECB decided to make more county t20 games and England games available on terrestrial television with PR used for this.

One thing that came to mind whilst watching was around changing the over length to 5/10 balls and why they didn’t change boundaries to something like 5/10 - incentivise big hits, makes scoring simpler for new viewers, etc. Don’t quite understand why they made that tweak to the over length and not that much else.

Also agreed, the one stumping was top drawer fairplay.