The Hundred squads are in frame for a revamp before the next edition in 2026, in a bid to maintain the competitive balance of the league. This ‘reset’, confirmed by the tournament’s managing director Vikram Banerjee on Friday, will overlap with the takeover of new investors for eight franchises. The idea for the squad overhaul would likely mirror the IPL’s mega-auction practice, under which teams retain fewer players than usual to rebuild the core.
While Banerjee expects the decision to be unpopular among the coaches, he deems it pertinent to the tournament’s growth. Squads in the women’s Hundred underwent a similar overhaul between 2021 and 2022, but the majority of men’s teams have kept their core intact. For the ongoing season, all teams, both men and women, were allowed to retain up to 10 players from their 2024 edition squads. This is the same number of retentions allowed in the past year for men’s teams, but an increase for women’s from eight in last year.
“I’d like next year to be a bit of a reset,” Banerjee told ESPNcricinfo. “All these leagues do it over time, and next year should be one of those. There are three things that are non-negotiable. You want to make sure whatever you do brings the very best players in; whatever the mix is between draft, auction, direct signings, retentions, the very best players in the world choose to play here.
“But you also need competitive balance… That ‘Any Given Sunday’ philosophy, that you don’t know who’s going to win this game, that’s a good thing. Coaches won’t like that, but from a league level, that’s an important thing. The third thing is that it has to work [for both] men and women, and that’s really important to us.”
With the ECB already having begun formalizing the retention rules, many investors are pushing for an auction to replace the drafts. Even if this proposal does not get accepted, many decisions going forward are likely to be influenced by the newcomers in the team management. Some of the new investors used their overseas franchises to bring players into the tournament, clearly wielding their influence in this year’s signings.
But Banerjee isn’t worried about that diluting the teams’ identity. He has been coming in and out of the Hundred games almost daily and has seen the fans and players passionately owning their teams.
“I stand by that objective,” he said. “I love the amount of yellow [in the stands] when I go to Nottingham, or green when I go down to Southampton… That fan affinity is something that we need to keep building on.”
“Even if that means players having a run-in on the field. I can’t condone the exact choice of words, but the fact that this means something to them is great… It’s so important for the high-performance element that this is the [league] that they love playing in,” he said of a heated Liam Livingstone, who went on to score a 69-run knock after Tom Curran called him words.
Banerjee is keen to bring the Hundred forward as an ‘unmissable event of the summer’, and he believes the transitions awaiting the tournament before the next edition will be a starting point to realize that goal.
“We take a lot of what we do for granted, but a full house at The Oval or Emirates Old Trafford, or 6,000 flags in the Hollies Stand, is something special,” Banerjee said. “We’re having some great conversations already about the tournament in general and while the 2026 season will come around fast, we’ve got a decent amount of time.
“I would like us to be the unmissable event of the summer for families… If we can be that, then in season 20 – or whatever the number is, season 50 – I would love us to be standing shoulder to shoulder with all of the great sports brands… If I ask you what the very best sporting leagues are in the world, I would like us to be in that list [with] NFL, IPL, Wimbledon.”
