If the words of Colin Graves are any indication, then the Hundred may have caught the BCCI’s fancy, with the England and Wales Cricket Board’s current chairman’s knowledge on his Indian counterparts have been “regularly asking me” about the tournament.
“I know that some of the countries abroad, India in particular, are looking at their own, They have been talking to me about it for the last year on a regular basis. So around the world, it has created a lot of excitement.” Graves told Sky Sports.
However, even if the BCCI eventually decides to organize a tournament modeled on the Hundred, it will not be able to do so before 2023. In a Future Tour Program cycle which badly affected by the pandemic in the due course of time, there will be no window for such an experiment for at least the coming next couple of years.
The next FTP cycle will run from 2023 to 2028. The BCCI has in the past looked up at the possibilities to introduce a mini-IPL but could not do so due to looking at the people who are invested emotionally in the Indian Cricket scenario. Getting the tournament up getting it going on has been one of the top priorities for Graves, who is now eyeing on the post of ICC chairman. He called it the “biggest challenge” of his five-year tenure.
“I think the biggest challenge was getting The Hundred off the ground. We had all the push back initially but I think people are now starting to see the advantages of it. I think it is the right thing to be doing and will be a valuable asset to the ECB going forward, both from a profit perspective and playing point of view. I think people, certainly in cricket, don’t like change. I don’t think they realized we are trying to attract a new audience – women, children, and families, which we never really had come to cricket.” Graves added
The ECB signed a contract of about a 1.2 billion pound broadcast deal with Sky Sports and the BBC in 2017, which also runs between 2020 and 2024 and includes live cricket returning to the BBC for the first time in 21 years so far.
