How good is the Hundred?
One criticism aimed at the hundred is how much better than the blast is it? Some people have even suggested that as many as 7 teams would have a decent chance of winning it.
It is very difficult to test such an idea, since the Hundred has seen a lot of overseas players come and go over the tournament however I believe I have come up with a decent set up.
Methodology
The method is simple, look at the hundred teams and create for each one an expected XI. For this I focused on the players with 6-8 games and then looked at 4-5 to fill in the holes.
I then created the expected top 7 and how you’d expect the bowling to go for this team. Now these aren’t perfect XI’s, if a team missed a top quality player due to circumstances then they don’t get them.
Finally I subbed in the 2022 Blast stats, so for batters I looked at runs and balls faced per Innings. For bowlers their economy rates. If a player didn’t play in the blast or had a very low sample size I used their 2022 overall stats. If a top 7 xStats wasn’t close to 120 balls I’d looked at their number 8 and 9.
This would give us an xbatting score and xBowling score allowing us to compare with Blast teams using NRR. There are a few issues with this system
Aggressive batters often got slightly unlucky with their blast stats when recent form suggests they could do a lot better.
In general a lot of players would expect their stats to improve just by being in stronger teams so these estimations are most likely lower limits.
Results
In 2022 the 8th lowest NRR was 0.58 jointly by Leicestershire and Notts.
All 8 teams easily pass that and 5 have a better NRR than finalists Lancashire and Hampshire.
Southern Brave
Southern Brave has made a number of errors in it’s selection choosing a number of out of form players. It is also missing Jordon and Mills who could have improved it’s bowling a lot.
Trent Rockets
Why are Trent Rockets so low despite topping the table in the hundred. Well a number of batters have had superb seasons, especially Malan. Luke Wood has been superb in the powerplay for them.
London Spirit
Another of the top teams coming low due to their batting stats being underestimated, especially batters like Rossington and Pollard. However their bowling has been superb and would be expected to out bowl any blast team easily.
Birmingham Phoenix
This is a side I think gets unlucky, Livingstone, Moeen and Howell get underrated in my model. The first two due to variance and Howell faces very few balls per Innings. I wouldn’t be surprised if in the real word their batting improved enough to push past Surrey and Yorkshire.
Welsh Fire
Welsh fire has been by some distance the worst team in the hundred however it’s players has done very well in the Blast. Welsh fire struggles come more from their two openers scoring no runs and a few other players not performing as well as a result. These xNRR also doesn’t account for Hain and Bairstow who’d easily improve it.
The final three teams all perform extremely well despite a few errors from them like Super-chargers going for Faf du Plessis.
So it looks like the hundred teams are about equal to the quality of the top 5-7 blast sides. I disagree for one big reason, the bowling quality.
4 of the 5 best bowling sides are Hundred sides. And bar the Brave the poorer bowling sides are the batting heavy Super-chargers and Originals.
This data suggests that in real life most of the Hundred teams would devastate blast batting line ups. Especially since you’d expect them to improve as they’d face less set batters. This in turn would help the batting as they’d be chasing lower scores more often.
So in conclusion there are only a few county teams that could probably compete in the hundred, showing that the quality of play has indeed increased. Though it does seem the bowling has been concentrated more than the batting. Perhaps some teams need to be smarter in how they draft batters.