One hundred balls per side. That is the entire pitch for The Hundred — cricket’s shortest professional format, invented in England, now in its sixth season and, as of 2026, part-owned by some of the biggest names in world sport. If you have arrived mid-tournament wondering why MI London are defending champions, why Jos Buttler plays for something called Manchester Super Giants, or how a “set of five” differs from an over, this guide covers the whole system.
- The Hundred is a 100-ball-per-side cricket competition with eight men’s and eight women’s franchises across England and Wales.
- The 2026 season — the sixth — runs from 21 July to Finals Day at Lord’s on 16 August.
- Each team plays 8 group matches; the top three reach the knockouts via an Eliminator and Final.
- MI London are the defending men’s champions; Sunrisers Leeds hold the women’s title.
What is The Hundred, exactly?
It is a franchise cricket competition where each side faces exactly 100 legal deliveries — shorter than a T20 by 20 balls per innings, and structured differently. Bowling comes in blocks called sets of five: a bowler delivers either five or ten consecutive balls, changing ends every ten, with each bowler capped at 20 deliveries per match. There are no traditional overs, a timeout-style strategic break sits mid-innings, and a new batter faces the next ball regardless of whether the dismissed pair crossed.
The format was built for speed — matches finish inside two and a half hours — and for double-headers: on every matchday, the women’s fixture opens the same ground before the men’s game, a scheduling choice that has made the women’s competition the most-watched domestic women’s cricket competition anywhere. Both competitions run identical structures: 32 group matches, 34 in total including knockouts.
The eight franchises — and why some names changed in 2026
The 2026 edition is the first fully under new ownership, after the ECB sold stakes in all eight franchises to private investors — including IPL owners — in the biggest structural change in English cricket’s modern history. Two rebrands headline it: London’s Lord’s-based team now plays as MI London under Mumbai Indians ownership, and the Leeds franchise competes as Sunrisers Leeds under the Sunrisers group. Manchester’s side, backed by serious IPL money, became Manchester Super Giants.
- MI London — Lord’s — defending men’s champions
- Sunrisers Leeds — Headingley — defending women’s champions
- Manchester Super Giants — Old Trafford
- London Spirit — the capital’s second franchise
- Southern Brave — Southampton
- Birmingham Phoenix — Edgbaston
- Trent Rockets — Nottingham
- Welsh Fire — Cardiff
The money followed the ownership. In the 2026 player draft, Harry Brook went as the top pick at £465,000, with Sam Curran (£350,000), Tom Curran (£260,000) and Will Jacks (£250,000) among the marquee salaries — figures that put the competition’s top band alongside every franchise league outside the IPL. The celebrity-investor era has visibly arrived too: Jude Bellingham was in the stands at a Welsh Fire fixture this season as private investment reshapes who sits in the boxes.
How the 2026 season works: format and knockout path
Each of the eight teams plays 8 group matches — four home, four away — between 21 July and mid-August. Two points per win, one per no-result, with net run rate separating ties. Then the cutoff:
- First place after the 32 group games advances directly to the Final at Lord’s on 16 August.
- Second and third meet in the Eliminator on 14 August, with the winner joining the table-toppers in the Final.
- Fourth or below means elimination — there is no wider playoff bracket, which keeps every group match consequential.
That top-three structure is the format’s quiet genius: finishing first is worth a genuine advantage (skipping a knockout entirely), so teams keep attacking long after qualification is safe. Net run rate — average runs scored per ball minus average conceded per ball — settles level teams, which is why captains chase targets hard even in dead rubbers.
The 2026 season so far: the story at the halfway mark
According to ESPNcricinfo‘s tournament coverage, Trent Rockets have surged to the top of the men’s table powered by Finn Allen’s hitting, while Jos Buttler — despite consecutive half-centuries — has been carrying a Manchester Super Giants side struggling to convert his 224 runs at an average of 112 into wins. Mitchell Marsh (173 runs at 57.66 for Sunrisers Leeds) and Ben Duckett (176 at 58.66 for the Rockets) headline the batting charts alongside him; Marcus Stoinis leads the wickets with 9, ahead of Richard Gleeson (8) and Adil Rashid (7).
The season’s texture has been bowler-friendly by Hundred standards — Southern Brave defended and chased low totals in Jofra Archer’s key spells, London Spirit battled to defend 105, and a mismanaged Phoenix chase of 129 fell to Rashid, Archer and Wood. Joe Root, newly reappointed England Test captain, cruised to a match-winning 58 not out for Welsh Fire — the kind of crossover moment the competition was designed to produce, with a Phoenix investor watching from the stands.
How The Hundred fits cricket’s wider calendar
The competition occupies the August school-holiday window that county cricket’s T20 Blast once owned, and it now shares the global franchise circuit with the IPL, Big Bash, SA20 and the Lanka Premier League — each governed under the international structures set by the ICC. Its players arrive from and depart to international duty constantly: this year’s edition runs alongside Pakistan’s Test tour of the West Indies, which we covered in our analysis of Pakistan’s away-Test record, and the two-employer tension that creates — country versus franchise — is the same one we mapped in our sports contracts guide.
Formats also borrow from each other. The format’s fielding restrictions during the opening 25 balls work like a compressed version of the powerplay rules we explained in our powerplay guide, and tactical innovations trialled here — the ten-ball set, the mid-innings break — keep appearing in T20 leagues a season later. Whatever you think of 100-ball cricket as a purist, it has become the sport’s tactics laboratory.
The tactics the format invented
Five seasons of 100-ball cricket have produced genuine tactical novelties, and three of them are worth understanding before you watch a knockout match.
The ten-ball gamble. Letting one bowler deliver ten consecutive balls is the format’s biggest strategic lever. Captains save it for two moments: a set-batter matchup a spinner is winning, or the death overs when a yorker specialist is hot. Get it right and you have bought ten balls of pressure no T20 captain can replicate; get it wrong and a fifth of your bowling allocation is gone in four minutes. Adil Rashid’s seven wickets this season have come largely from doubled sets deployed exactly this way.
The 25-ball sprint. With fielding restrictions lifting after 25 balls rather than 36, openers face a compressed version of the powerplay calculation: the reward for attacking the first quarter of the innings is proportionally larger, and the cost of losing two early wickets proportionally worse. Finn Allen’s tournament — the engine of Trent Rockets’ rise to the top of the table — is the current masterclass in pricing that trade correctly.
The strategic break as reset button. The mid-innings timeout looks like a broadcast gimmick and functions as a coaching intervention: bowling sides that enter it behind the rate have historically clawed back more often than T20 equivalents, because the format’s shortness amplifies any two-set swing. London Spirit’s successful defence of 105 this season — a total that survives roughly one match in ten — was built almost entirely on post-break squeeze.
A short history: from 2021 experiment to 2026 sale
The competition launched in 2021 as the ECB’s bet that a shorter, simpler format could reach audiences county cricket never had. Five seasons of ECB ownership followed — growing broadcast numbers, persistent purist criticism, and a women’s competition that outgrew every projection — before the board sold franchise stakes to private investors ahead of this season. The valuations that sale produced, and the arrival of IPL operating groups, moved the argument from “should this exist” to “who controls English cricket’s August”. That question is genuinely open, and the BBC’s cricket coverage of the investment era has tracked the governance tension between the ECB, the counties and the new owners all season. Wherever it settles, the 2026 edition is the first chapter of a different book.
Our view at Unicorn Blogger
Our view at Unicorn Blogger
We think the 2026 ownership era has already settled the format’s existential question. For five seasons the debate was whether the competition would survive; the IPL owners’ arrival answered it with money rather than argument — Mumbai Indians do not buy into competitions they expect to fold. The sharper question now is what it does to the England side: a domestic window where Brook, Root, Duckett and Archer all play high-intensity white-ball cricket three weeks before Test duty is either perfect preparation or a workload time-bomb, and this August — with an England-Pakistan series looming next month — is the live experiment. Our prediction for the tournament itself: Trent Rockets to finish top and win the Final at Lord’s, with Buttler ending as the men’s top scorer regardless of where Super Giants finish.
The women’s competition: the quiet success story
Every structural argument for The Hundred lands hardest on the women’s side. The double-header model gave women’s domestic cricket something no standalone league had managed: guaranteed big-ground exposure, shared broadcast slots, and crowds an order of magnitude beyond the previous domestic ceiling. Sunrisers Leeds arrive as defending champions in a competition where the title has never been retained — and where the same 32-match, top-three format applies identically, with the women’s Eliminator and Final sharing the 14 and 16 August dates.
The ownership change raises the same question here in sharper form: private investors bought both halves of each franchise, and how much of the new money flows to the women’s squads — salaries, support staff, overseas recruitment — will be the honest measure of whether the sale was a growth story or an extraction. The early signal is positive: overseas availability in the women’s draft improved year-on-year, and the opening fortnight’s attendance held the double-header gains. Watch the retention lists this autumn; that is where intentions become contracts.
Key takeaways
Key takeaways
- It is a 100-ball format: sets of five, 20-ball bowler caps, no traditional overs.
- The 2026 season is the first under private/IPL ownership — hence MI London, Sunrisers Leeds and Manchester Super Giants.
- Top three of eight reach the knockouts; first place skips straight to the Lord’s Final on 16 August.
- Buttler (224 runs at 112) and Stoinis (9 wickets) lead the 2026 charts at the halfway mark.
- Every matchday is a women’s-men’s double-header — the format’s biggest structural innovation.
Frequently asked questions
How many balls does each side face?
Each side faces exactly 100 legal deliveries. Bowlers deliver sets of five or ten consecutive balls, with every bowler limited to a maximum of 20 deliveries per match.
When is The Hundred 2026 final?
Finals Day is at Lord’s on 16 August 2026, with the Eliminator between the second- and third-placed teams on 14 August. The group stage began on 21 July.
Who owns the eight franchises now?
The ECB sold stakes in all eight franchises to private investors ahead of 2026, including IPL owners — Mumbai Indians’ group rebranded the Lord’s franchise as MI London, and the Sunrisers group renamed the Leeds side Sunrisers Leeds.
Who are the defending champions?
MI London are the defending men’s champions and Sunrisers Leeds hold the women’s title, both winning the 2025 edition under their new identities’ first seasons.
How is the 100-ball format different from T20?
The 100-ball format is 20 balls per innings shorter than a T20, replaces six-ball overs with five-ball sets, caps bowlers at 20 balls instead of 24, and schedules women’s and men’s matches as same-day double-headers at every venue.
How can I watch the 2026 tournament?
In the UK, Sky Sports carries all 68 matches live with the BBC broadcasting a free-to-air selection and full radio coverage; international audiences are served by regional broadcasters including Willow TV in North America.
Two weeks of group cricket remain before the Lord’s finale, the Eliminator race is genuinely open, and The Hundred’s first privately owned season is on course to be its most consequential. Whether you arrived for Buttler, for Bellingham in the stands, or just to understand what a set of five is, the format rewards exactly the kind of attention a fortnight of knockout-adjacent cricket deserves. We will carry the run-in and Finals Day across our cricket section.
