The Hundred: Pakistan's Shahid Afridi and Babar Azam named in the initial draft

The Hundred, the revolutionary cricket tournament conjured up by the England and Wales Cricket Board has garnered a lot of interest from all over the world. The matches in this league will have 100 balls per side and is slated to commence in July of 2020. The league will consist of eight city-based franchise teams, each of which will pitch both a men’s and women’s team.

The tournament will see some amazing changes in the game of cricket. The ends will change every 10 balls and bowlers will be allowed to bowl either 5 or 10 balls consecutively and a maximum of 20 balls per game. The powerplay will be 25 balls for each team. Teams will be able to call timeouts, like in IPL since 2009.

The tournament has garnered interest and sharp reactions from the cricket fraternity. All of England players have been supportive of the call for this new league and are optimistic about its success on a large scale. While others questioned the move of introducing a new format when T20 was highly successful. Whatever may be the case, names have been released for the initial draft and it features some superstars from Pakistan as well.

Babar and Afridi set to make The Hundred appearances

As per reports from the Business Recorder, former Pakistan captain Shahid Afridi and current limited-overs vice-captain Babar Azam are named in the initial draft of the Hundred and are expected to play in the highly interesting league. Some big names expected to be part of this new venture are Afghanistan captain Rashid Khan, Australia opener David Warner, Steve Smith, and Mitchell Starc, Bangladesh captain Shakib Al Hasan and New Zealand’s Kane Williamson.

England captain Eoin Morgan is very excited to be a part of this new thing. “The Hundred, yes, I do think we need it. We need one franchise-based tournament, with fewer teams, in order to consistently sell the game to the country. “Anybody I speak to who loves the sport but doesn’t necessarily love cricket is crying out for a tournament that he or she understands because 18 teams going for a long period of time just doesn’t make sense to anybody,” Morgan was quoted as saying by BBC.

Other major names in the draft include Lasith Malinga, Steve Smith, Chris Gayle, Faf du Plessis, Aaron Finch and Quinton de Kock amongst others and the whole thing will be televised live in Britain on October 20.

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