The ECB’s move to privatize The Hundred feels like stepping onto an unsteady platform, the ground shifting just slightly beneath your feet. They’re talking about the next six months, maybe more, as if time itself is malleable—waiting for the “right partners” to appear, bringing not just money but expertise, whatever that might mean in a sport that feels increasingly less about the game and more about the deal.
Counties, holding 51% of their teams, sit in this strange limbo, waiting to see if selling off their stake might bring salvation or something much less concrete. A few, perhaps, eye the potential windfall with a bit too much hunger. Others might be hesitant, reluctant to let go as if sensing that this is more than a transaction; it’s a handover, a letting go of control.
The talk of foreign investors—names like GMR and Sunrisers Hyderabad floating in the background—gives it all an almost surreal quality. £120 million for a stake in Southern Brave? It sounds like fiction, a number plucked from thin air. And yet, no one can quite confirm it, leaving the question hanging, unresolved.
Vikram Banerjee, the calm at the centre of it all, talks about patience, about taking time to find “quality” partners, as if there’s no real urgency, but you can sense the quiet pressure building. Behind the optimism, and the promises, there’s an edge—what happens if they don’t find what they’re looking for? If the teams, already halfway commercialized, sit stagnant for another year, still tethered to a board that seems eager to let them go?
Banerjee told the Business of Sport podcast:
“The most important thing is we get the right partners. If that takes a bit of time, that takes a bit of time. I think it’s fine. We have been running for four years and so, if in this first round, we [find that] either the values aren’t there for one or all of the teams, or the right partner isn’t there for one or all of the teams, it’s fine. We’ll just carry on running it, we’ll do another year. My priority is to get the right partners and make them amazing and help us grow,”
“But if we don’t get the right partners for [eg] London Spirit, we’ll hold it and we’ll work with the MCC for another year and try again in a year’s time. I think that’s possible. Having said that, in terms of a timeline on what we’re looking for, we are hoping these are done over the next six months so that whatever this new world looks like for the competition, those deals will have transacted by the 2025 season,” he added.
And then, there are the counties themselves—entities that once held the heart of English cricket—now watching as something much bigger takes shape. Something global, something with a life of its own. They’re told the money will flow back to grassroots and recreational cricket, but how much of that promise is just an echo? The answers aren’t clear, and perhaps that’s the most unsettling part of all.
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