Cricket culture war sparked by The Hundred threatens to overshadow summer game

A hot August was once prime cricketing weather except that this year, and for the next five to come, it has been given over to something as yet impersonating this great game – the Hundred.

It is even proposed that next year’s Ashes will be completed by the end of July so this pampered child, a sort of T20-light with contrivances, can have the stage to itself.

If that happens, and the dates have yet to be confirmed, it will be the first time Australia have toured England and not played at least one Test in August, a month when the holiday season is in full swing.

It is a reason to worry. The Ashes are cricket’s holy grail. To risk all that seems an extraordinary act of self-harm by the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Long before it claimed squatters’ rights on high summer, the much-hyped Hundred had become a battle ground for cricket’s culture war between traditionalists, who want to maintain a full programme of red and white-ball cricket (including a 50-over Cup and T20 Blast) and modernisers whose sole ambition is to maximise profit by whatever means necessary.

The Hundred has its advocates and, if the premises upon which it was founded prove correct, it will have many more, mostly new to the game. But that is the issue for its detractors – just where is the evidence showing a strong case for the Hundred?

The ECB claims it is all there in its research but that has never been aired, not publicly. As a result, all kinds of conspiracy theories have been set running.

So far, the Hundred has given women’s cricket a bigger profile (a good thing) and enriched the ECB, through its enhanced broadcasting deal. It has also made the players involved wealthier along with the grounds which stage the matches.

There have been costs, not