The Hundred Explained: Women's Cricket's Shortest Format and the Eight Teams Driving a Revolution

Cricket has never had a format quite like The Hundred. When the England and Wales Cricket Board launched this 100-ball competition in 2021, it was the first professional league in the sport’s history to build itself around an entirely new set of playing conditions. Six seasons in, it has also become the most visible platform women’s cricket has ever had in the United Kingdom.

At a glance: The Hundred is a 100-ball cricket competition with eight city-based teams across England and Wales. Launched in 2021 with equal prize money for the women’s and men’s competitions, every match is a double-header. The women’s final is broadcast live on the BBC, and nearly 70% of female fans say cricket feels more engaging since the tournament began.

The concept is deliberately simple. Each side faces 100 balls, split into 20 five-ball overs. Matches finish in about two and a half hours. Every game is a double-header: the women’s and men’s matches share the same venue on the same day, with a single ticket granting access to both. Sky Sports broadcasts every ball. The BBC shows eight women’s matches free-to-air each season. All remaining women’s fixtures stream free on Sky Sports’ YouTube channel.

That access has reshaped the audience. Nearly 70 percent of female fans now say cricket feels more engaging than it did before The Hundred arrived, according to ECB research. For a sport that spent most of its history treating the women’s game as an afterthought, that number tells a story by itself.

The Format: Five Balls, a Strategic Timeout, and No Changing Ends

The Hundred’s rulebook reads like cricket redesigned. The obvious departure is the over: five balls instead of six. A captain can call upon the same bowler for two consecutive overs from the same end, meaning a single bowler delivers ten balls in a row from one set of stumps. No bowler may bowl more than four overs in an innings.

Batters do not change ends between overs. If you are at the non-striker’s end when a new bowler takes the ball, that is where you stay. The pace rarely slackens.

Each fielding side gets one 90-second strategic timeout, barred during the first 25 balls. The powerplay covers those same first 25 balls, with only two fielders outside the 30-yard circle. A no-ball costs two runs and awards a free hit, a rule borrowed from T20 but given sharper teeth by the shorter innings.

The tournament is compact. Eight teams play each other once in a round-robin, plus one bonus match against their nearest regional rival. Top of the table goes straight to the final. Second plays third in an Eliminator.

The Eight Teams

The Hundred’s franchises are city-based, seven in England and one in Wales. A wave of private investment in 2025 saw IPL-affiliated groups acquire stakes, bringing Indian ownership and, in two cases, new names.

Birmingham Phoenix (Edgbaston): Alice Capsey, Ellyse Perry, Linsey Smith.

London Spirit (Lord’s): Marizanne Kapp, Deandra Dottin, Amy Jones.

Manchester Super Giants (Old Trafford), formerly Manchester Originals, now majority-owned by the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group: Sophie Ecclestone, Meg Lanning, Smriti Mandhana.

Sunrisers Leeds, previously Northern Superchargers, bought outright by Sun Group for a reported £100 million: Phoebe Litchfield (292 runs in 2025), Annabel Sutherland, Deepti Sharma.

MI London (The Oval), controlled by Reliance Industries and the most successful women’s side with two titles: Hayley Matthews, Danni Wyatt-Hodge, Amelia Kerr.

Southern Brave (Southampton), 2023 champions: Laura Wolvaardt, Lauren Bell (19 wickets in 2025), Jemimah Rodrigues.

Trent Rockets (Nottingham), part-owned by Todd Boehly’s Cain investment group: Beth Mooney, Nat Sciver-Brunt, Ashleigh Gardner.

Welsh Fire (Cardiff): Sophie Devine, Freya Kemp, Georgia Wareham.

Equal Prize Money: Built for Parity

The Hundred did not add a women’s competition alongside the men’s. It built them as equals. The trophies, made by London silversmiths Thomas Lyte, are identical: 56 centimetres tall, 13 kilograms in weight, commissioned together in 2019. The prize fund is split evenly. No other major cricket competition had made that commitment before a ball was bowled.

Men’s salaries remain higher, a gap the ECB says it intends to close. But the symbolic power of identical silverware on finals day has been transformative. When Southern Brave’s women lifted the trophy at Lord’s in 2021, the cameras cut to the same plinth the men’s captain would stand beside hours later.

Former England player Dani Hazell, head coach at Sunrisers Leeds, has called the tournament essential for domestic players who previously had no franchise-level exposure. International stars like Perry, Lanning, and Wolvaardt train alongside English-qualified prospects in packed grounds through the school summer holidays, with every ball televised. That pipeline did not exist before 2021.

What Comes Next

The 2026 season is underway, running from 21 July to 16 August. The competition’s future beyond 2028 is debated: IPL-linked investors are reportedly keen to convert it into a conventional T20 league, and the ECB says it is open to discussions.

Whatever happens to the 100-ball experiment, its legacy for the women’s game is secure. Before The Hundred, women’s domestic cricket in England and Wales had never drawn six-figure television audiences, never commanded equal prize money, and never shared a stage with the men’s game as a genuine co-headliner. It does all three now.

---

Sources: ECB / The Hundred official website, Wikipedia, Cricket World.

Related articles

• ODI, T20 and Test: the three formats of women’s cricket explained
• Women’s Cricket World Cup complete history: every winner 1973 to present