In the four years between that Super Over crowning England the One Day Cricket World Cup champions and crashing out of the following tournament, there have been four of arguably Britain’s worst prime ministers.
But none of those PMs have been quite as damaging to this country and its reputation on the global stage as the creation of one bloody cricket competition.
The Hundred was expected to revolutionise the limited overs game in England, boosting the chances of our white-ball sides and giving the world another, more modern form of cricket.
Not content with two short versions of the game – the 50-over and 20-over formats – it was decided by the England and Wales Cricket Board that the already farcical T20 should be shortened to 100 balls and rebranded as a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it two hour game.
Why? For no good reason I can see other than giving upper middle-class families near the country’s metropoles a chance to go and watch some sport after school or work.
But that isn’t what cricket is about.
Cricket is for the thinking person, who is willing to sit through five days of weather-obsessed, booze-fuelled nerdy goodness, just for the possibility of a rain-affected draw. Oh, and it’s about six balls in an over!
Cricket is for the thinking person, someone willing to sit through five days just for the possibility of a draw
This, in short, was a revolution too far.
The fact is England can’t possibly be good at two forms of cricket at once so why try and become world beaters at a format no-one else plays?
The Hundred serves only to damage our prospects in the fifty and twenty over games where international performance is actually important, meaning this new format is actually doing more harm than good. It’s a net negative. It’s the reason we crashed out of this year’s world cup in India. Please just scrap it for heaven’s sake.
So yes, the England and Wales Cricket Board are more damaging to the United Kingdom’s international standing than His Majesty’s Government.
And given the government has recently been led by the likes of Liz Truss and Boris Johnson, that’s quite an achievement.
