Having a Blast might soon be out of date for county cricket’s older crowd

“It was mostly cricket as we know it, just shorter, leaving us ultimately unsatisfied”

“Cricket should remain true to itself … it should never prostitute its ethics and essence for the fast buck”

“It simply has to succeed, for a big hand is being played, and if it does not come off, there is nowhere else to go”

None of these quotes is from a report on the Hundred. Instead they come from newspaper articles ­written in 2003. Twenty-two years ago, cricket was on the eve of a total transformation.

The England and Wales Cricket Board had come up with a brand new concept. For the first time, teams were going to play just 20 overs a side. It would be called the T20 Cup. It was going to be fast. It was going to be sexy. It was going to transform world cricket. They were right. It did.

It has become the dominant format across the globe. On one analysis of revenue per match, the third biggest sports league in the world is a T20 competition, the Indian Premier League, which is beaten only American football’s NFL and our own Premier League football.

But in England, the issues that led to the invention of T20 continue to be fretted over, with the arrival of its much-maligned white-ball cousin, the Hundred, where the sale of shares in the eight new franchises has netted the ECB a cool £500 million. A fast buck in all senses of the word then.

What once was the shiny jewel in the ECB’s crown now looks more like a sitting duck. Last year the Vitality Blast Finals Day was shunted to its current date in the middle of September to accommodate the rest of the calendar. Yesterday a packed Edgbaston managed to avoid too much rain as Somerset beat Lancashire and Hampshire beat Northamptonshire in the semi-finals. There had been a gap of 57 days between the end of the group stage and those matches.

England players were also unavailable due to the T20 series against South Africa. Lancashire captain Keaton Jennings must have thought forlornly about what he could have done with Phil Salt’s unbeaten 141 and Jos Buttler’s 83 off 30 balls which were at the centre of England’s record-breaking victory at Old Trafford on Friday.

In some ways, the advent of an annoying little cousin like the Hundred has done wonders for the Blast’s profile, which has taken on the mantle of elder statesman. Remember when teams randomly chose to add an extra word to their county name or indeed didn’t, an onlooker might reflect while gazing at a Blast table.

Yet at Edgbaston on Finals Day, the overall atmosphere is suspiciously Hundred-like – or perhaps that should be the Hundred is suspiciously like the Blast. Play is peppered with videos of fans enjoying the matches while hurtling through the air in a bright yellow bungee pod. The gap between semi-finals plays host to the chaotically entertaining Mascot Race (congratulations to Northamptonshire’s Steeler the Dog who won). That goddamn sausage dog spends all day running round the outfield on the advertising hoardings.

Buried among all of this is some pretty enjoyable cricket. Who could fail to crack a smile watching 43-year-old Jimmy Anderson running in to bowl Somerset’s Tom Abell in the last ball of the powerplay? There is a magnificent 81 from 52 balls from Tom Kohler-Cadmore, but that is overshadowed in the second semi-final by Chris Lynn’s 108 from 51, which included five consecutive sixes to blast Hampshire into the final. It is the highest score on a Finals Day, and a first ever century. “Oh Michael van Gerwen,” sang the Hollies Stand to the bald Australian.

Edgbaston is sold out, as it almost always is on Finals Day, but the Blast is facing falling attendances. After all, there is something that the ECB views as shinier. The governing body has a wandering eye for a cricket format and the Hundred is a newer, younger model which also happens to have a lot of very rich friends.

The Blast’s future will be inextricably linked to the Hundred. If the latter does evolve into a T20 format, is there really a demand to watch two versions of almost identical competitions in one summer? Not all counties have a Hundred side but how long will it be until the number of franchises expands, particularly given the windfall they have brought in?

The writing does seem to be on the wall. Richard Thompson, the ECB chairman, said in an interview with BBC Sport that the calendar is “unrelenting” as domestic and international cricket competes for the bodies of its best players. One solution is already in progress – the number of Blast matches being played is going to be reduced for next year, although the final will take place in July to ensure it can all be played in one block. Yet the Hundred’s new owners look to be understandably insistent that international players be available for when their competition starts. There are simply not enough days in the season to make it all fit at the highest level.

In the culture wars of cricket formats, one question that remains unanswered is whether any of this is actually working. Whether it is 2003 or 2017, when the Hundred’s format was originally suggested by the ECB’s then chief commercial officer Sanjay Patel, new audiences are the Holy Grail for which everyone is searching. Yet Richard Gould, the ECB’s chief executive, admitted this summer that there was no evidence that those who had come to the Hundred had gone on to watch other formats.

Instead, cricket is developing audiences along each of its different strands. The traditionalists stick with the Tests while the Blast has the county fans raised on their shorter formats. The Hundred appears to have claimed a younger, more diverse crowd. The investment it is receiving will no doubt supercharge its ability to attract the biggest and best players, no matter how much grumbling takes place about how dire it is. At least until the ECB comes up with the next pretty new thing.

Photo credit: Harry Trump/Getty Images