Late bloomer Jake Lintott starts Hundred with eye on England call-up

A little over a year ago, soon after the Southern Brave squad assembled before the inaugural season of the Hundred, Tymal Mills, an injury-plagued fast bowler who had played the last of his five Twenty20 internationals three years earlier, and the spinner Jake Lintott, had a chat about the future. “I remember T talking to me, saying: ‘I’m going to play for England after this,’” Lintott remembers. “I was a bit taken aback because he’d had loads of injuries and not played much cricket.”

A couple of months later Brave had won the trophy, and Mills was on the plane to the T20 World Cup.

The Hundred is a controversial tournament, with its garish branding, crisp-packet kits, subsidised tickets, terrestrial TV exposure and focus on cities rather than counties amounting to a recipe for resentment among many diehard cricket followers. But already its ability to serve as a springboard to international attention has helped make it extremely popular with players. As the second season gets under way on Wednesday with Southern Brave hosting Welsh Fire in Southampton, there will be plenty of players hoping to tread the same path as Mills.

“From a players’ perspective the opportunity is massive,” Lintott says. “It’s a tournament that puts us on the global stage, whereas - no offence – but the T20 Blast is nowhere near that level. It can change people’s lives. It’s exciting, and it gives you an idea where you’re at, globally. It’s such an exceptional standard that anyone who does really well in this tournament has pretty much proved they can hack it at international level. I understand there’s frustration around the county game but ultimately I think it’s a good thing for English cricket and the only people who aren’t behind it are those