The Hundred blares out hits and misses for its difficult second album

Nirvana cracked it, so did Blur, but the second album is never easy. The fanfare is bigger, but the expectations greater, last year’s innovations already old hat.

The BBC viewing figures for the Hundred’s second season, revealed by the Telegraph on Thursday, did not make particularly cheerful reading for the new ECB chair Richard Thompson, over the froth of a Lord’s cappuccino. In the tournament’s second year there has been a drop of up to 20% in the numbers switching on for games – from an average of 615,000 per match in 2021 to just over 500,000 this year. The bright and shiny 2021 opening match, the women’s game between the Oval Invincibles and Manchester Originals, attracted 1.6 million; this year’s starter for 10, Southern Brave against the Welsh Fire, brought in only 550,000.

There could, of course, be a myriad reasons for this – not just waning interest in the hundred-ball hoopla. Sky have not released any figures, so it is hard to know if some viewers just jumped ship to their more familiar cricket channel.

The Premier League started a week early this year, in order to squeeze in a winter World Cup, which left the Hundred with just two days before the football bandwagon started rolling. It was also part of a calendar stuffed full of cricket – six white ball games in 11 days for England’s men’s team in July alongside the two Test series, England women’s Commonwealth Games journey plus their multi-format series against South Africa. This is also the first summer people have been able to travel abroad for their holidays since 2019. There is only so much time in anyone’s life to dedicate to cricket watching.

There is also a question of how much free to air television the younger demographic watch, with under 30s