The Hundred, a brand new form of cricket unique to the English (and Welsh) game, was concluded on Saturday with a spectacular finals day at Lords.

It can be viewed as a success so far, not least for the superb marketing campaign that attracted record crowds, especially in the women’s game. A far more family-focussed experience has received lots of plaudits and the free-to-air TV also helped to swell the audience inside and outside of stadiums. Probably the most interesting aspect of the game is the way it dispensed with some of the long-established unwritten rules of cricket. In effect, they started with a fairly blank piece of paper and didn’t allow the baggage already within the game to get in the way.

Cricket is already in a state of flux. The long game (4-5 days) is under threat and gets very few fans to watch it, other than test matches which – in England, at least – still appeal to the masses. But with the England team suffering from too little exposure to this form of the game, it’s unclear which way the game will swing. The Hundred was designed to introduce a faster, more fan-focussed spectacle to the party, even though the Twenty20 Blast – which was designed to do more or less the same thing – is already an established part of the cricket calendar.

With a ‘shortened’ version already – the 50-game in which England are world champions – there is a danger of diluting the picture even more by adding yet another, even quicker, format into the mix, but they still did. Why?

One of the reasons was to try to capture a different audience. It’s only one season in, so we might just have seen the novelty factor rather than a guarantee of long term attendances, but the figures so far exceeded the Twenty20 Blast right away. One way of achieving this was to ignore traditions and rules that had always got in the way before and to make new ones rather than be confined by those that men – nearly always men, almost always white and usually over 50 – in blazers have always insisted upon.  

For instance, men and women’s teams can play at the same ground on the same day. We don’t have to have the traditional eighteen counties. Heck, we don’t even have to six balls in an over.

It wasn’t perfect but new things rarely are. It was felt that some of the rowdiness that cricket fans create was a bit too much for a family audience (although that might not be the families saying it) and the eight teams might need to work harder at creating dedicated family areas in future seasons.

But it’s matchday experience captured the imagination of younger fans and that’s a great start; like most sports, cricket needs to attract, develop and nurture a brand new generation of fans and this was as good a way as any. Certainly the perception that young fans aren’t as interested, or don’t want to consume the sport in the way previous generations have, was knocked right out of the ground.

Getting them back year after year, and also to other formats of the game, will be a bigger challenge but the early signs are encouraging.

Football, by comparison, has the same challenges as cricket – and nearly all sports - when it comes to attracting new fans, but nowhere near the complications when it comes to the format. One of the beauties of the beautiful game is that it’s virtually the same whether it’s played on the beach with jumpers for goalposts or in front of 70,000 at the Maracana.

There isn’t a shorter form of the game that’s played during the season by the same players at the same stadiums. Fans have one product – a ninety minute match – and that’s it. Its simplicity is both a blessing and a curse. Trying to shoe horn the footballing equivalent of The Hundred would be far more difficult, if even desirable. Football fans don’t want or need shortened versions; the current version is about right, if the experience around it is right too.

When a football league was formed in Canada, shortly before Covid ruined the world, they were in that rare position of being able to start from scratch. They chose to focus on fans first, telling clubs to get the off-field experience right first before worrying about having the best players. It was a sensible – albeit messed by the pandemic – approach because there is little point having the best players and winning matches if there is no-one there to see it.

But again, that situation was incredibly unique. In most leagues, they have over a hundred years of previous to contend with. The ‘way it’s always been’ is a tough nut to crack; remember, if you’re old enough, how slowly we accepted three-points-for-a-win and back-pass rules.

Yet football still had a big opportunity for re-invention handed to it on a plate by the 18-month break from capacity crowds. It seemed – mid-pandemic – that it was one that was going to be taken. We’ve realised how important the fans really are, said all the pundits. It’s not the same without them, the club managers all gushed on their return. When fan power hit the proposed ESL for six, it seemed that fans had climbed to the top of the tree.

Surely then, it was time to get it right for fans when stadiums re-opened fully for the first time earlier this month? If they really are as vital to the game as everyone says, then what better way to show it? But what happened? Clubs generally reverted to type. Straight away.

New ticket processes, extra entrance checks (that they chose to do rather than enforced by the authorities) and low staffing levels have led to lots of problems, and lots of formal apologies as fans have been left queuing while games have started, and found the experience inside and outside the stadium to be sadly lacking.

Clubs have recoiled in horror. What a shock! they’ve cried in protest. How could we have possibly known that this might happen? But the truth was, they knew. We all did. If stadiums opened with full capacities and no restrictions, then it was pretty much unavoidable.

The equation was simple. Roughly the same number of fans (although another easily anticipated number shows about half the clubs in England having attendances so far that are down on the 2019/20 average) and roughly the same number of staff, as is the case for most clubs, means that increased fan anxiety, issues or added complications around access was always going to lead to more problems on match days.

But clubs did what they’ve always done. And, as before, fans are expected to swallow it and continue to plough their money into the club regardless. Despite all of the rhetoric during the pandemic, the simple truth is that the big changes to the way fans are treated haven’t materialised. The big handbrake turn happened the moment the clubs heard the word ‘no restrictions.’

The Hundred, to its credit, largely ignored what had gone before in other formats of the game and focussed on what fans actually wanted, and how that might be delivered. The way it has gathered feedback after games suggests that it will continue to operate in this manner.

If football is ever going to reinvent itself, off the field at least, then it could learn a big lesson here. But you can’t play at it. You have to mean it, invest in it and don’t take your eyes off it. But how many football clubs did a fan survey (finally) during the pandemic to find out what their fans were thinking, yet couldn’t even get them through the gates in time for kick-off when it came to an actual match?

Fans have been locked out of football for a year and a half. Empty stadiums, with canned crowd noise and cardboard cut-out fans proved to be a very poor and very short-term substitute. We have been shown a world without fans, and it was not a good one. If there has ever been a time to do it differently, it has to be now.

So you have to ask. If not now, then when exactly?

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