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Coaches in the Hundred have raised questions about what squads will look like in competition next year, suggesting that a new partial draft of squads will be necessary before the delayed launch of the tournament in 2021.
Player contracts were terminated on Monday through a ‘force majeure’ clause after tournament postponement and the ECB has opened talks with the Professional Association of Cricketer Players (PCA) and other stakeholders in recent days to find out what will happen to the squads.
And while there appears to be little appetite for a full new draft, question marks about Kolpak players, overseas availability, and possible retirements mean freezing squads would be next to impossible.
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Under the competition’s planned retention rules, teams were able to keep up to ten players from their starting team for the 2021 edition of a tournament, in a salary band negotiated with the player. Then another rough draft would follow for teams to fill in the gaps in their squads over the winter, with the fewest players to choose from, allowing for a shorter, more focused TV show. A modified version of this system seems, at an early stage, to be the most likely solution.
Speaking on a Sky Sports podcast, Shane Warne and Tom Moody, coaches for London Spirit and Oval Invincibles, respectively, said there would be trouble keeping the same squads in place by 2021.
“It will be two years, basically, when the Hundred begins since we made the auction [draft]”Warne said.” There will be different players, some players might fold, so I’m not sure how they will do it. Will they start from scratch again, where they will have to gather different squads? Will they have a core of ten players from that team and then they can only choose ten players?
“It will be interesting to see what the ECB thinks about the rules and if they say ‘you know what, let’s start again’ or another alternative. I think everyone was very happy with the team they had, but two years after the auction [draft] that is, a lot of time has passed in terms of how the players develop at that time. It would be interesting to see how it affects them. People could be playing international cricket then, it could have risen so they are not available as much, so they could have chosen a different team. “
In Warne’s London Spirit team, there are four players who would be 35 or older at the start of next year’s competition: Joe Denly, Jade Dernbach, Mohammad Nabi and Roelof van der Merwe. Kyle Abbott, initially selected as a local player thanks to his Kolpak record, would have to be chosen as a foreign player. The Moody’s Invincibles team has fewer problems in terms of age, but it has a similar problem with the Kolpak players who signed Rilee Rossouw and Hardus Viljoen for £ 75,000 and £ 60,000 respectively.
“I think most teams would be quite comfortable with the teams they have. Not only did most teams plan to have a team that was capable of winning the first year, I think they also had a long-term eye on make sure they had players who wanted to be part of their franchise for years to come, “said Moody.
“I think there are some difficult obstacles that the organizers will have to solve. One of the ones that really stands out to me is the situation of the player Kolpak: [the loophole] It will expire at the end of December this year, so the teams that chose Kolpak players knowing that they had them for the first year, but then would have had to make a decision with them the following year, regarding whether to retain them. on board as abroad or let them return to the grass. “
PCA President Daryl Mitchell has taken the lead in the discussions and has directed multiple calls with county representatives and other high-ranking players since the tournament was officially postponed last Thursday. Of the 21 county representatives (three counties have two), six have contracts in the Hundred: Ben Cox, Luke Fletcher, Tom Kohler-Cadmore, David Payne, Max Waller, and Chris Wood. Others, like Jake Ball and Jack Taylor, would have been well positioned to win the national team as a ‘wild card’ through performances in the T20 Blast.
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Both male and female players were notified by letter on Monday that their contracts had been terminated. An ECB spokesperson said: “This letter is documentation necessary to legally update and inform players of the situation, which follows a notification last week about the launch of the new competition that will move to 2021. We are currently working with the PCA and other key stakeholders regarding player selection and retention for the first edition of the Hundred in 2021. “
Selection and retention for the women’s competition is less likely to raise concerns, as the players signed by the teams rely in part on location through an informal recruitment process rather than a draft. Charlotte Edwards, the former England captain and head coach of Southern Brave, said Sunday that it was a “worrying moment” for the women’s game after the tournament was postponed, with several players missing out on short-term deals.
While the postponement of the Hundred has been confirmed, the ECB has downplayed reports that a revised schedule for the summer could not include women’s cricket. “We are working alongside all the international boards whose men’s or women’s teams will come this summer,” said a spokesman.
