Hundred returns in face of £500m sell-off

Competition's fight for centrality and acceptance goes on before the uber-rich enter the fray next year

- Taha Hashim

The Hundred continues to confuse. There are the endless comments online that deride it and then the kids at the ground, rocking their Southern Brave merch and living in a different world. This is a transformative competition for women's cricket that has also produced a wild, maddening gap in pay. The highest earners in the men's tournament this year will make £200,000, £135,000 more than the best women's players; the difference in 2024 was £75,000.

There is the mind-numbing debate over whether it should be a Twenty20 show, when the rhythm and beat is the same as that format. Another 20 balls in each innings is unlikely to lead to some utopia. The big one remains this, four seasons down: this is a cricket tournament in which the cricket is always battling for centrality, competing against the big-picture existential questions. Is it cutting through on the BBC? Will it expand? How does the rest of the summer fit around it?