Is it called the Hundred because you feel about a hundred years old trying to watch it on TV? Can’t follow the needlessly confusing on-screen scoreboard, annoying pop acts blaring their music, gibbering kids TV-type presenters telling you everything is amazing, commentators you have barely heard of shrieking, the constant unsettling surprise of “hadn’t realised this one played for them”… this is sporting TV that exists in a bubble, free of any context or meaning, endless hours of sound and fury, signifying nothing. If this is the future of cricket on TV, maybe it is best we just switch it off and go do something else instead.
But never mind the quality, feel the width: BBC2 had an astonishing 7¼ hours of cricket on Sunday. First, MI London against Manchester Supergiants Women and then their corresponding menfolk, two of the 16 matches broadcast by the BBC during this year’s competition. Sky Sports has been showing every game so there have been plenty of occasions when the same match has been on more than one channel simultaneously, such as Sunday’s MI London matches. The sort of broadcasting double-up normally reserved for World Cup finals.
For the MI London women’s match, the BBC had Alex Hartley doing her hyperactive kid-sister schtick with Steve Finn and Tymal Mills on the commentary. Isa Guha was also involved. Over on Sky, Nick Knight was with Ravi Shastri, who seems to be on almost every match of this slop: a Ranganathan of the shorter formats. He was there at Edgbaston on Saturday when Jude Bellingham, who has a small ownership stake in whatever the Birmingham side is called, turned up to sprinkle a bit of stardust. Shastri, with typical modesty, explained to host Hannah Wilkes how his meeting with Bellingham had gone: “He said it was great catching up and listening to you in person.”
Katey Martin, a New Zealand former cricketer, has been getting plenty of commentary work, and her view of the tournament so far is that “it has been awesome”. Sure. She also conceded: “The teams all merge slightly together in my own mind because there have been so many changes.”
You said it, Katey. Birmingham Phoenix were playing Welsh Fire, who fielded that well-known Taff, Joe Root. I appreciate that I am far from the first person to note that the merry-go-round of who is playing for whom is making it hard to develop a relationship with the franchises, but it does feel ridiculous and the matches definitely all washed over me this weekend. Yorkshire – remember them? – were playing Middlesex at Lord’s on Sunday, shorn of the services of their batting boyo.