Now into its second year, we have seen many areas of The Hundred try to tackle criticisms of its debut season. The match day experience has been enhanced at grounds offering a range of games and the distribution of cardboard helmets, and the calibre of overseas player has certainly improved with the likes of Glenn Maxwell and Andre Russell present. There is however one issue that prevails, an issue that seriously lowers the ceiling of The Hundred’s success. This is the weakness of communication.
Indeed, for a tournament that is doing its best to be hyper-modern, a lot is left to be desired when it comes to the sharing of crucial information.
A prime example of this comes with the aforementioned overseas players. The nature of The Hundred not having a unique window does mean that unfortunately players will be coming and going. Due to international fixtures and the Caribbean Premier League, the tail end of the tournament has been plagued by departures. When one players leaves, it is common for teams to sign a replacement. It is also common for the teams not to actually announce it.
When it comes to finding out about replacements you are better off keeping your eyes peeled on ESPNCricInfo than you are looking at the official social media pages of The Hundred. You put the TV on only to find that Sunil Narine has finally left for the CPL, and that the Oval Invincibles have signed Peter Hatzoglou. If you support a team this is information that you should easily be able to find for yourself.
Chronic underuse of social media extends beyond the realm of player availability. Throughout this tournament I have been surprised at how difficult it can be to quickly find the starting line ups. It was thinking about this topic that also alerted me to the bizarre fact that none of the teams have their own Twitter accounts. Whilst all present on Instagram, they have totally shunned the blue bird app.
As someone who is chronically online, this strikes me as a massive departure from sporting convention. When I want to find out the Arsenal starting XI, I look at Twitter. I use Twitter to find out the England Test XI (even when they name it a day early). Most direct in comparison is that I use Twitter to find out the Rajasthan Royals XI.
Now, you may notice that all these teams also do something that quite comically The Hundred does not. They all name their teams on Instagram too.
Yes. The Hundred teams can only be found on Instagram, but they do not actually post their line ups at the time of the coin toss.
This is a real head scratcher as a spectator. Social media already has a well-trodden path in terms of how sporting teams behave to cover all bases. The teams from The Hundred have a lot to learn in terms of doing the basics.
Moving away from social media comes the final issue I can see with communication, this relates to the scheduling on free to air TV. When you are lucky enough to show sport on the BBC, you should do everything possible to maximise eyes on the product. The secret to this is surely predictability. Same time same place each week. This has not been the case for The Hundred.
Indeed, even as someone who watches every match, I could not honestly have told you which matches were on BBC Two and when these matches were. This is not ideal when it comes to advertising a product. A better plan would surely have been to pick a couple of days of the week to always have a match on. This would have a better chance of snaring your casual spectators. It helps turn the sport into something akin to a TV series, a weekly event that you can rely on.
This might all sound awfully pedantic, but if you do not do the basics you run two risks. One is that you squander a lot of potential new viewers. If you find it on TV, it would be much better if you could rely on the fact that it will be in the same time and place for you next week. Similarly, you do not want to irritate people who are already likely to watch it. As a fan of the competition it should not be such an effort to find out basic information like who’s available and who’s playing.
Many will talk about snagging the hottest Australian and Pakistani players next summer, but the greatest game that The Hundred could win would be the communication game.
