Andrew Strauss has left his roles as strategic adviser to the England and Wales Cricket Board and chair of the performance cricket committee only three weeks after the changes to the structure of domestic cricket he recommended in last year’s high performance review were declared “dead in the water” by Richard Gould, the governing body’s chief executive.
The announcement came on the day it emerged that the men’s Hundred could be abandoned in favour of a new Twenty20 competition, with the ECB said to be concerned the new format has failed to catch on internationally and was not as appealing to the cream of international talent as the widely played alternative.
Both Gould and the ECB chair, Richard Thompson, were prominent critics of the Hundred while working together at Surrey, which was the only county not to vote for the creation of the new tournament, before they moved to Lord’s last year. Gould had said before taking his new role in October that the county’s “preference was for a two-division T20”, and that is indeed one of the options now back under discussion.
“I wasn’t a lone voice,” he said in 2021. “There was a meeting in Nottinghamshire, six or seven years ago, where the counties looked at the options and decided – with a significant majority – that the preference was for a Premier League T20, county-based with promotion and relegation. That didn’t fit the template that was preferred by the ECB.”
The most likely new structure would see the number of teams increase from the current 10 to 18, split into two divisions, with a team running alongside, but independently of, each first-class county and with branding focused on cities.
The ambition would be for the women’s tournament to eventually use the same format, though there might not be enough teams for it to do so from the start. Abandoning the 100-ball format would mean the tournament would have to be renamed though the fact that football’s Premier League is widely known as the EPL would make the most obvious rebranding problematic.
Last year the ECB extended its broadcast partnership with Sky until 2028, with the tournament a key part of that package and the broadcaster boasting of having played “a key part in its development”. A senior source at Sky told the Guardian that they “remain huge fans of the competition” which had “been a huge success taking the game to new audiences”.
Both Strauss’s departure and the uncertainty over the Hundred’s future can be interpreted as signs of Gould and Thompson making their influence felt at Lord’s, though in a statement the ECB insisted the former England captain himself had himself decided that “having recently taken on additional external responsibilities it is time to step away from the role”.
Thompson said: “Andrew has given outstanding service to English cricket over many years in a number of different roles. I’ve greatly valued the advice and expertise he has provided in my time as chair, and have enjoyed working with him. We are currently implementing the vast majority of recommendations from his impressive high performance review, which I believe will help our England Men’s teams to sustain their success. I have no doubt he has much more to contribute to the game and hope he will return in the future.”
