The Hundred, a professional franchise 100-ball cricket tournament involving eight men’s and women’s teams located in major cities across England and Wales, began on Wednesday (21).

The Group / Knockout event will come to close on 21 August.

The tournament, run by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), was delayed by a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The tournament gives equal weight to both men's and women's sides, with almost all the matches taking place as back-to-back double-headers at the same venue on the same day, with one ticket giving access to both the men's and women's games while men and women will share the same amount of prize money.

The format was invented to attract younger and more diverse crowds to watch cricket, with the expectation that the shorter format will mean each match lasts around two-and-a-half hours.

The BBC shows free-to-air broadcasts of the competition whilst all of the women’s matches and some of the men’s matches will be available to stream for free on Sky Sports' YouTube channel.

Format On 19 April 2018, the ECB informed the county cricket clubs for the first time that they were proposing an entirely new 100-ball cricket format, in which there would be 15 traditional six-ball overs and a final 10-ball over. Other mooted changes include removing the LBW law. The plan drew significant opposition but was supported by England captain Joe Root. On 21 February 2019, the ECB confirmed revised playing conditions in which there would be ten 10-ball overs with bowlers delivering five or 10 consecutive balls. One-hundred-ball cricket is a form of limited overs cricket, played by two teams each playing a single innings made up of 100 balls. Games last approximately two and a half hours. The main changes introduced into The Hundred:

• 100 balls per innings
• A change of ends after 10 balls
• Bowlers deliver either five or 10 consecutive balls
• Each bowler can deliver a maximum of 20 balls per game
• Each bowling side gets a strategic time-out of up to two and a half minutes
• A 25-ball powerplay start for each team
• Two fielders are allowed outside the initial 30-yard circle during the powerplay
• Teams will be able to call time-outs, as has been the case in the IPL since 2009
• The non-striker must return to their original end after a caught dismissal
• No-balls are worth two runs