#the-hundred

#the-hundred

Here we have a scenario whereby the ECB's great glossily packaged commercial project, sold as a force for sunlight, modernity, and openness, could end up actively reinforcing the exclusion of cricketers based on race. At which point the whole thing simply collapses. Every part of the Hundred's staging, the beamingly self-righteous tone, the schmaltzy marketing, the prim ECB talk about enshrining equality in its statutes. All of it goes up in smoke if in reality the message is: you're not coming in if you're Pakistani.

Oval Invincibles, the Hundred's most successful franchise, will be competing as MI London next year, the name favoured by their new Indian co-owners. The change of monicker brings the men's and women's teams, who between them have won Hundred titles in each of the past five years, in line with the rest of the Ambani family's Mumbai Indians holdings which, in addition to its IPL team, includes MI Cape Town in the SA20, MI Emirates in the ILT20 and MI New York in Major League Cricket.