Blowout on Hundred opening night leaves new owners under no illusions about men’s team
Matt Roller05-Aug-2025It was the night that the Hundred’s new private investors marked their ground. London Spirit’s new co-owners, a consortium of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs dubbed the “Tech Titans”, strolled across the outfield at Lord’s, posing for pictures with their families next to the pitch on which their new team had just been bowled out for 80.The titans – officially known as Cricket Investor Holdings Limited – valued Spirit at an eye-watering £295 million in a virtual bidding war in late January, a sum which blew the Hundred’s other seven teams out of the water. But the past 48 hours have shown why: they have unlocked the keys to Lord’s, dining in the Pavilion on Monday night before lining a corporate hospitality suite in the Edrich Stand on Tuesday.It is the start of a brave new world for English cricket: after months of negotiations, the ink is now dry on the paperwork for six deals out of eight, with the final two on track to follow. The first payments in a £500 million windfall have landed in counties’ bank accounts, and everyone is trying to work out exactly what happens next.Related
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Akash Ambani was also at Lord’s, with Reliance Jio – where he is chairman – in the final stages of thrashing out the paperwork for their joint-venture agreement with Surrey for Oval Invincibles, with the aim to complete after the Hundred. He spent Saturday in a box at The Oval, watching India build a healthy lead over England in the fifth Test with Rohit Sharma and Kieron Pollard for company.On Tuesday night, he would doubtless have enjoyed the efforts of Rashid Khan, who said his established connection with Mumbai Indians’ offshoots was “a big part” in his off-season move to Invincibles. “It’s nice that they’re getting in,” Rashid said. “I spoke to [Ambani] last night, and he said, ‘I’m coming to the game.’ Maybe tomorrow, next day, I’m going to meet him.”The Hundred’s opening night had all the ingredients: a crowd of 26,013 on a perfect summer evening; a London derby shown live on the BBC; some genuine star power from Rashid, David Warner and Kane Williamson. But the recipe failed. The biggest cheer of the night was for a stray fox that ran a full lap of the boundary, before being scared off by Ashton Turner.Akash Ambani watches the fifth Test at The Oval•Alex Davidson/Getty ImagesThe men’s match was a poor spectacle on a slow surface: the first six of the night did not arrive until the final ball, with any sense of jeopardy long gone, and the top individual score was Will Jacks’ 24. After the drama of England and India’s epic men’s Test series over the last six weeks, it was hard to shake the sense of a collective comedown.It cannot have been what the tech titans had in mind when they outbid the RPSG Group in late January in a virtual auction. But they have fully bought in: their deal was finalised late last month and they have held extensive talks with the MCC over their vision for the franchise’s future. They will assume operational control on October 1, and plan to hit the ground running.Even the hardiest investors must have felt some sense of buyer’s remorse while watching Spirit’s men bat, as a team comprising 11 players aged 30 or above managed nine boundaries between them in 94 balls. “It wasn’t a shocking pitch – not at all. But we probably didn’t adapt to the pitch quick enough,” said Liam Dawson, never prone to overstatement.There were few signs of what was to come in the women’s game, albeit with the boundaries pulled in significantly. The teams scored 335 runs between them including 15 sixes – 11 off the bats of Australians Grace Harris and Meg Lanning – with more than 15,000 fans arriving by the mid-point of the run chase in Spirit’s successful defence of 176.Spirit are defending champions in the women’s Hundred but their men have been consistently poor, winning just three of their last 18 games. They have again revamped their squad this year, with Williamson and Justin Langer replacing Dan Lawrence and Trevor Bayliss as captain and coach, but this was a desperate start.Yet the first impression of the Hundred’s fifth season was that it will be all about the sixth – just as the fourth was all about the fifth. Last year, the tournament was framed as a “shop window” to attract prospective investors; now, it is a “transition” season as new investors work out what they already like, and how much they will need to change when they take charge.