Eoin Morgan feels Hundred will Improve English players

• Morgan said English players will improve with the Hundred tournament.
• He said playing in other leagues has helped the payers a lot.
• The tournament will start on August 3.

Eoin Morgan feels the Hundred will improve English cricket by giving home-grown players more prominence and preventing a large exodus of non-England internationals to rich overseas leagues.

Morgan said exposure to global competitions like the IPL and Australia’s Big Bash helped his World Cup-winning team. He will lead London Spirit in this year’s Hundred after retiring from international cricket earlier this summer. In the future, he believes the Hundred will help develop such talent.

“For the majority of my career I’ve been a huge advocate for players going abroad and playing in big tournaments and taking on different roles, either as one of the senior players within the group, or one of a number of overseas players within a team,” he said. “There’s a different level of expectation around that. But when we have such a good tournament at home now, there’s no reason for that to happen in the same way.”

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Morgan’s comments came on the eve of the launch of the new UAE T20 League, which would pay its star players $450,000 contracts. With the first edition planned for January 2023, David Warner may choose to play this league over Australia’s Big Bash.

“I think the one thing that strong domestic tournaments produce is your domestic heroes,” Morgan added. “You normally only experience it when you play international cricket but tournaments like the Big Bash have produced Chris Lynn.

“He is a magnificent domestic player – international cricket hasn’t worked out for him – but when he walks around Australia, he’s a massive hero. People know exactly what he does and how he does it.

“As our tournament gets even bigger, we will see that in abundance. There are some tournaments in the world that are bigger than a lot of countries’ fixtures, bilateral series and anything else they play in between.

“It’s already happening, and we’re probably behind the eight-ball. We’re very, very lucky the Hundred has been the success it has, so we can develop the product and have the players involved.

“The one thing we have going for us is we still own and engage with our local players. If we ever lose that, there’s a serious issue. All of our players still want to play for England. They want to play Test-match cricket, ODIs or T20s. As soon as we lose that…”

The advent of the Hundred has been controversial, with English cricket divided on its merits. It has pushed England’s established competitions to the periphery of the summer, notably the T20 Blast, whose 20th season ended last week.

In light of the IPL’s recent rights auction, which led to TV deals worth more than £5 billion, Morgan is realistic about the sport’s direction, and that global franchise tournaments will develop at the expense of international cricket.

“For me, international cricket has always been the thing I strived to play in, and I’ve loved the opportunity of playing for Ireland and England,” Morgan said. “It allowed me to play against the best in the world. If that changes and the scale tips, I think it tips in only one direction.

“The one thing the franchise model takes away from international cricket is a little bit of control, and ideally a franchise would want control of the biggest asset any country has – which is the players. Once you have that, what does international cricket offer? How much viability does it bring? The one thing it brings at the moment is [the chance to] have the best playing against the best the majority of the time. But once you take that away …”

Asked whether he felt that was a good or a bad thing, however, Morgan replied: “It’s just a thing. The good thing is cricket will grow regardless. The game will evolve regardless. It’s whether you want to change with it or not.”

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