3 minute read
The IPL has been such a colossal success, it makes total sense to slavishly copy every aspect of it so that it’s much easier for everyone to make direct comparisons and see exactly how your short format competition pales in comparison. The Hundred’s going to start having auctions, everyone!
If you were to ask UK sports fans which aspect best sums up the worst qualities of the IPL, a large percentage of people would say the auctions.
Even if it doesn’t exactly stand up to much scrutiny any more, most of us in this country still have a notion of sports teams as being defined by (a) the regions they represent and (b) the people who go out on the field to play the game. Football and county cricket clubs’ identities are to a great extent built on their best-known and longest-serving players, many of whom will also have been locals.
Given that it demands the players are intermittently rounded up for redistribution, a player auction absolutely flies in the face of this. Each reboot of human resources means fans are subsequently invited to either (a) continue supporting a team which will now have a strikingly different on-field presence, or (b) switch allegiance to follow a favourite player at a different club.
For a lot of people, neither of these options quite sits right.
But that’s what the IPL does, and the IPL is massive, and IPL teams now own a bunch of Hundred teams, so that is what The Hundred is going to do.
How will it work?
Hundred franchises were permitted to sign or retain up to four players each prior to the auction. To give one example, Manchester Giants have retained well-known Mancunians Jos Buttler, Noor Ahmad, Heinrich Klaasen and Liam Dawson.
Admittedly, they’ve also kept hold of Sophie Ecclestone, who is at least from the North-West, and if you look around the other teams you can just about perceive the faintest air of regional identity if you squint hard enough: Harry Brook at Sunrisers Leeds, say, or Will Jacks at MI London – although that’s about it. (Speaking of regional identity, where do we stand on the name ‘Mumbai Indians London’? The most generous assessment is that it constitutes a delightfully broad celebration of contemporary urban multiculturalism.)
Other than the four player allowance, everyone else has gone back in the bag and an auction will be held in London on March 11 and 12.
The IPL auction is a huge deal and this one will be just like it, only the sums will be smaller, and there won’t be quite as many top players, and the franchises they’ll be signing to will be B-grade feeder teams for the proper ones in the bigger tournament.
Once again, the big selling point here seems to be that this is the same as the IPL, only less. Personally, we’d aim higher, but The Clone Roses, Oasish and The Faux Fighters will tell you there’s a living to be made with this kind of thing.
