Month: February 2025

THE HUNDRED: What have the new owners actually bought?

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As reported by Cricinfo, the London Spirit Hundred team have been bought by a group of American businessmen, including the CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella, who have paid £150m for a 49% share in… well… what? What have they actually bought?

Let’s start with a couple of things they have not bought.

1. A share in the future TV and merchandising rights of London Spirit.

There is no way that these hard-headed businessmen can possibly believe that they are going to get their money back from TV rights and sales of replica shirts. The ECB’s own (optimistic) estimates, as leaked by Lalit Modi last year, suggest total profits for London Spirit of just £48m before tax over the next 8 years. Tax would reduce that to £34m, but remember that the investors have only bought 49%, so would actually get just £16m back, leaving them £134m in the red. And that’s assuming the ECB’s estimates of a substantial increase in TV revenue hold. The bottom line? Our American friends are not in this for the money!

2. Lord’s

If instead of London Spirit, Satya Nadella & Friends had decided to hop on a bus over to Islington and bought Arsenal Football Club, among the things they would now actually own would be the the Emirates Stadium. That’s not the case with The Hundred. The new owners do not now own Lord’s – the self-styled “Home of Cricket” where London Spirit play their home matches – they don’t even own 49% of it. They don’t own a single brick of the pavillion, nor one blade of grass on the square – they own nothing physical whatsoever.

So, what have they bought?

The simple answer is that we don’t really know.

When I was at school, a friend returned after Christmas one year with a star – an actual star in the sky, along with a certificate to say that he owned it. (And all I got was a new bike!) So is this what Nadella & Friends have bought? The cricketing equivalent of a star in the sky? A certificate which says “London Spirit – Property of Satya Nadella”? It is possible. But given that these men rose to the top of some of the most powerful businesses in the world, I’m going to suggest that they aren’t that stupid – they have bought “something”, so what it it?

The best answer I can come up with is that they have bought a sort-of “timeshare” over Lord’s – the right to be the “Kings of Lord’s” and to use it for a specified time (roughly coinciding with the month of August) over a specified number of years. (The documents leaked by Modi suggest 8, because they finish in 2032, but… as with so much of this, who knows?)

But what does that timeshare entail? The right to go into the pavilion, normally reserved for MCC members? The right to take over the pavilion on match days? These are not men who are used to having to queue for a seat – if they want to sit in the Long Room to watch the game, they’ll expect to be able to walk in and do that, and have it all to themselves, with big blokes in black glasses on all the doors to make sure of it.

If this is what happens, it has all been done legally and above-board – the members of the MCC voted to allow the current leadership full rein to negotiate the terms of this timeshare; but none of them know what it actually entails. And they may never know, until they walk up to the pavilion one day next summer to find out their name isn’t on the list and they can’t come in.

WOMEN’S ASHES: Bowling Rankings

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Bowling Rankings Matches Wickets Dot % Boundary % Wide % Economy
1. A King 7 23 70 6 0 3.25
2. S Ecclestone 7 16 62 9 1 4.49
3. A Gardner 4 9 73 4 0 2.60
4. KJ Garth 6 9 70 7 3 3.84
5. D Brown 4 6 71 5 4 3.16
6. LK Bell 6 9 57 10 3 4.92
7. G Wareham 4 8 44 10 1 5.60
8. ML Schutt 6 8 57 14 3 5.86
9. L Filer 5 6 59 11 4 4.77
10. CE Dean 6 7 47 13 1 5.97
Ranking = Wickets / Economy ©CRICKETher/cricsheet.org

WOMEN’S ASHES: Batting Rankings

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Batting Rankings Matches Runs Dot % Single % Boundary % Strike Rate
1. BL Mooney 7 409 43 36 11 96
2. HC Knight 7 229 61 22 9 75
3. NR Sciver-Brunt 7 227 61 24 8 68
4. A Gardner 4 190 54 28 9 81
5. A Sutherland 7 218 68 17 9 67
6. TM McGrath 7 145 52 26 15 99
7. DN Wyatt-Hodge 7 166 52 31 10 83
8. AJ Healy 4 148 59 27 11 77
9. SIR Dunkley 4 121 66 15 16 92
10. G Wareham 2 49 14 32 36 223
Ranking = Runs * Strike Rate ©CRICKETher/cricsheet.org

WOMEN’S ASHES TEST – Day 3: Game, Set & Match

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Australia completed their 16-0 Ashes whitewash, wrapping up an innings victory inside 3 days in the Test at the MCG.

England (170 & 148) v Australia (440) #Ashes 🏏

— CRICKETher (@crickether.com) 2025-02-01T09:44:36.404Z

After piling on 350 on Day 2, Australia had said last night that they were going to try to get on with it this morning; but after Tahlia McGrath got out playing a “we need to get on with it” shot, their scoring rate ground to a halt as England ran through the tail. Australia did have one more ace up their sleeves – sending Ellyse Perry (who the Australian camp had hinted would likely play no further part in the match) in at 10, with just the two Test centuries (including a double) to her name. But she ended up making a small dent in her shiny Test average, which fell from just over 60 to just under, as a consequence of being dismissed for 2 – caught and bowled by Sophie Ecclestone.

Perry’s dismissal completed Ecclestone’s 5fer, becoming the 3rd player in the match to get her name onto the honours board after Annabel Sutherland and Beth Mooney.

Darcie Brown got Maia Bouchier early – hitting top of middle, no doubt to the consternation of her bowling coaches who would have been drilling her all series to hit the top of off! (Kids eh? Never do what you tell ’em!)

But Knight and Beaumont looked pretty comfortable against the seamers. However, things inevitably got dicier the moment the spinners entered the fray. King’s first over was a maiden bowled to Knight that contained more appeals than an ad break on Homes Under the Hammer.

Beaumont tried to take the fight to King, and was dropped twice in the first over she faced from the leggie. Between King and Ash Gardner, the spinners created so many chances that eventually something had to give, and it was Knight – caught at short leg by Phoebe Litchfield.

Once England had lost a couple of wickets the likelihood was always that the dam would burst, as it has done so often on this tour, and it was Alana King who laid the depth charges. King has been unplayable at times in this series – you can’t attack her obviously – that’s madness – but you can’t defend against her either. Sciver-Brunt, Dunkley and eventually Beaumont were all dismissed defending, and within a few overs a promising start had disintegrated.

Raf mentioned on Bluesky that England are so steeped in Jon-Ball it was going to be difficult to adjust mentally, and Danni Wyatt-Hodge’s dismissal to Gardner was a classic example: like the scorpion upon the back of the frog, she just couldn’t resist playing that shot – it was in her nature, and she perished in similar fashion.

With England’s last recognised batter, Amy Jones, dismissed on the dinner bell, Sophie Ecclestone and Ryana MacDonald-Gay must have felt like the condemned walking out to the gallows when they came out to face the Lord High Executioners King and Gardner in the evening session. There was no chance of saving the game, so with the crowd gasping at every play and every miss all England could do was stave-off the inevitable for a few moments more.

The one remaining question to be answered: would it be King or Gardner who got on the honours board? Each had 3 wickets going into the final session, and with Brown having taken that solitary wicket earlier, it couldn’t be both!

Having survived 22 balls of quality pressure bowling for a single run, MacDonald-Gay finally got a loose delivery from King… and planted a full toss straight into the hands of Darcie Brown at deep midwicket.

Advantage King, with 4 wickets to Gardner’s 3.

Then in quite similar circumstances, Ecclestone pounced on a too-short delivery from Gardner and sent it straight up in the air, where it was pouched by none other than King herself.

Deuce – 4 wickets apiece.

With England’s two number 11s – the Laurens – at the crease, the scoreboard in the stadium cheekily announced the “final” cumulative attendance figure for this game (a massively impressive 35,365) even though it remained technically possible for the match to still go to a 4th day.

Gardner went upstairs after a huge appeal against Filer, but it was doing too much; a leading edge from Filer off King fell a yard short of Darcie Brown; Filer again pulled King into the solar plexus of Georgia Voll at short leg, but Voll couldn’t hold on. Lauren Bell meanwhile was just blocking everything, eventually reaching 30 balls without scoring.

And then finally… it was Filer who pushed Alana King into the hands of Annabel Sutherland. Sutherland held on, and it was over. After she was denied a 5fer in the 1st innings, poetic justice was served.

Game, set and match King.

Game, set and match Australia.