A Test match takes five days. A match in The Hundred, on the other hand, takes about two and a half hours. Both are on the calendar this autumn, played by many of the same people, run by the same governing body, and watched, in many cases, by the same fans.
Cricket didn’t shrink becajuse people stopped liking the long version. It just added shorter formats alongside it, and fans have taken a liking to it.
How Cricket Got Here
The one-day international arrived back in 1971, when a washed-out Test in Melbourne was replaced by a single-innings match to give the crowd something to watch.
Twenty20 then followed in England in 2003. For cricket fans, this was the perfect fit for something to do or watch after a day’s work.
The Hundred then launched in 2021 at 100 balls a side, providing similar benefits to what Twenty20 brought in 2003.
Each format still follows the same general rules of cricket. Nothing fundamentally changed about the game. It just got shorter.
What the Short Format Is Worth
In 2025, the ECB sold stakes in the eight Hundred teams to private investors. The bids themselves place a total enterprise value of just over £975 million on the teams.
The stakes sold will inject more than £520 million into the game, with around £50 million ring-fenced for grassroots and the rest going to professional counties. Investors ended up taking operational control on 1 October 2025.
Counties without a Hundred team receive a larger share of that money than those with one. Therefore, the shortest format now underwrites the county game that plays the longest.
Everyone Else Did the Same
Cricket isn’t the only one stacking formats rather than swapping or reinventing them.
Popular music has been getting shorter for a while now. Chartmetric’s analysis of charting songs put the average at about three and a half minutes in 2019 and about three minutes in 2024. This is a clear response to how listeners prefer music in regard to length.
Even bingo did something similar. The 90-ball game is the Test match of the format. Now users can play online bingo games that follow a 75-ball, 80-ball, and speed format, all of which shorten the length of a bingo game.
You see something similar on television as well. Many streaming platforms now commission episodes of almost any length, from short-form series to hour-long dramas.
Where It Goes Next
T10 leagues are growing, and the 50-over game is in between the Tests’ and short formats’ money. However, what’s happened over the last few years does indicate where the game itself is heading.
If anything, short-format is slowly becoming the new norm and go-to. Test games, while still around and will be for a long time, are simply too long for today’s viewers.
We believe both will continue, but the shorter version is more likely to bring in newer fans, as it can be watched in an afternoon or evening for anyone interested.
