The Hundred’s incoming investors are already wielding their influence on the tournament, with several teams using a revamped recruitment system to sign players who represent their new partners’ other overseas franchises.
Rashid and Pooran’s deals are particularly notable because they played for other Hundred teams last year: Trent Rockets and Northern Superchargers respectively. Rashid was the first pick at the Hundred’s inaugural draft back in 2019 and has been retained ever since, but is instead moving to The Oval.
“The point of the direct signings was to attract high-end, better-quality overseas stars and I can only see it as a positive,” Daryl Mitchell, the chief executive of the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) told ESPNcricinfo. “There will be regulations in place, but there are always going to be relationships in cricket – long-standing ones in some cases.”
Mitchell said it was “par for the course” for players to extend their links with global franchises, though he encouraged the ECB to pay close attention. “The way that players move has been going on in cricket for a long time. There are always relationships that are already established between directors of cricket, list managers or coaches with certain agents and certain players.”
“There is an obvious opportunity for collaboration.”
Manchester Originals chair James Sheridan on their new partnership with Lucknow Super Giants
Players have represented franchises across multiple leagues ever since Kolkata Knight Riders made the unprecedented move to buy the Trinidad and Tobago CPL team a decade ago. But the trend has accelerated in recent years, especially after the 2023 launches of both the ILT20 and SA20, where IPL owners are heavily represented.
“If you take a very long-term worldview, maybe, at some point, it wouldn’t be crazy to see some kind of roll-up of these teams and a combination of these tournaments,” James Sheridan, who chairs Manchester Originals, said last week. “That would need tectonic plates to shift quite a lot. But it wouldn’t surprise me if, in 10 years’ time, we are looking at something like that.”
Sheridan suggested that the Originals, the Super Giants and Lancashire will create “joint development activities” in the years to come, but cautioned: “Contracting isn’t as straightforward as people might think in franchise cricket. You’ve got auctions, you’ve got drafts… But there is an obvious opportunity for collaboration.”
“The reality is that over the last four or five years, there are probably elements of county players aligning with Hundred teams,” Mitchell said. Is that likely to continue? I’d have thought so. The host counties are potentially going to be in control of the budgets of both the county and the Hundred teams as well.”
Mitchell said the PCA’s priority is to ensure that players retain confidence that Hundred squads will be picked on merit. “Over the next 12-18 months, it’s about making sure there are guard-rails in place to make sure players are picked on performance and that everyone’s got a fair shot of getting an opportunity.”
The ECB will retain overall control of the Hundred but is forming a new committee with representation from each franchise, which will discuss issues like recruitment. There is a growing expectation that the draft could be tweaked or revamped after this season, with an open-market system and an auction both raised as potential alternatives.
The influence of new owners in recruitment has largely been confirmed to the men’s Hundred so far, with the women’s franchise circuit still in a nascent phase. Amelia Kerr (Manchester Originals) and Laura Wolvaardt (Southern Brave) were both confirmed as direct signings last month, with the Originals also retaining Beth Mooney.
Matt Roller is an assistant editor at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98
