T20s could have helped cricket achieve Olympic dream, Hundred was unnecessary: Chappell

Former Australia captain Ian Chappell reckons that The Hundered was an unnecessary format and further added that T20 was good enough advocate for cricket to be included in the Olympics. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) came up with The Undred, to attract a wider audience. The first season of the format - both men's and women's competitions - are currently underway.

Chappell however reckons that it is an unnecessary innovation. “Apart from reducing the number of balls to obtain a terrestrial television deal, the reasoning behind the Hundred could well be that it improves the chances of cricket fulfilling the Olympic dream. This is often cited as a way to spread the game’s popularity to a wider audience. Surely the T20 format could achieve that same outcome without yet another reduction,” Ian Chappell wrote in his column for ESPNcricinfo.

He went on to point out the fact that the lesser the length of the game, there are chances that the players are there just to make up the numbers.  “Cricket is a team game ideally played by 11 members a side. Performance satisfaction is a big reason why youngsters fall in love with the game. Administrators would do well to remember that before they rush into devising shorter forms of the game. The more the length of an innings is reduced, the greater chance that there will be players “just making up the numbers”. Even those players crave occasional performance satisfaction,” he added.

Chappell further slammed countries like England and Australia for taking a more complicated route to sort a problem. "Throughout my playing career, I believed there were two possible solutions to a problem: a simple one and a complicated one. I also believed that to the benefit of Australia, England would regularly choose the complicated solution. They’ve done it again. To overcome the being the perceived problem of the public being fully conversant with cricket, they’ve concocted another form of the game – The Hundred. That’s right, they’ve reduced by a mere 20 balls a format that was extremely popular with players and the public,” he added.