ECB could allow Hundred teams to offer direct contracts to players: Reports

To strengthen the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB)’s ambitious project, The Hundred, the board is already in the process of selling stakes in all eight franchises in both the men’s and women’s categories. 

With that move already started, the board is also considering allowing the teams to sign players directly instead of the prevalent norm of teams being allowed a certain sum to spend on men’s and women’s players and coaches. 

According to a report in ESPNcricinfo, men’s players in The Hundred could be paid as high as £300,000 per season and could be offered multi-year deals as well. The women’s players, on the other hand, could earn as high as £100,000. 

The board is also requesting the UK's Home Office to allow the teams in the competition to feature at least four overseas players in the playing 11, giving it uniformity with leagues such as the Indian Premier League (IPL), the Pakistan Super League (PSL), and SA20, among others. 

These changes could mean that the budget of one team could shoot up from £1.9 million per year on salaries to nearly £3.5 million per year. If all these changes do come into effect, the total salary of the men’s and women’s players in The Hundred would be second only to India’s IPL and WPL.

Vikram Banerjee, ECB’s sales representative, who is overseeing the sale of stakes in the Hundred, said, "We are the sixth highest-paying team in the men's game.” 

“We're about to go seventh if we stay still at the moment - which we won't,” he added in the Business of Sport podcast.

This suggested that the ECB are indeed trying to move towards the big leap that they might have ahead of the 2025 season of The Hundred. But who could be the real gainers in this? Banerjee answered, "It's that top three or four players [per team] that you do need to pay to get their time and their effort to be there, and we have fallen behind."

Though the Hundred 2024, which featured at least two games every day with men's and women’s teams of a particular franchise playing on the same day and against the same opposition on the same ground, ended in July this year, the next will begin in August 2025.

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