The reaction to the video posted by SunRisers Leeds following their first Hundred victory showed how close the competition is teetering to the edge of consuming itself.
For those who didn’t see the footage before it was hastily deleted by the official account, it resembles the moment at a wedding when the music cranks up for a niche hymn – eyes fixed on the word-sheet, mumbling along hoping your next note follows the tune.
Emblazoned over the top of the footage was the word ‘TRADITIONS’ with an orange heart next to it, which hovered over Matt Potts’ head as he stared at the paper trying to get the words right. “We’ve been through it all together, and we’ve had our ups and downs,” goes the second verse of the song, which is usually belted around Elland Road, home ground of the football club Leeds United. Except, Leeds United’s ups and downs go significantly further back than SunRisers do, or indeed Northern SuperChargers did.
There’s a reason the reaction to the video was one of collective revulsion. In an AI world, fans want authenticity above all from the content they consume. It’s impossible for new franchises, with new kits, names and logos replacing the small but growing identities teams had built up over the last five years, to create that authenticity without it being unsettlingly performative. A fitting counterexample was seen on the same day SunRisers posted that video, when Worcestershire released a clip of their own team song being belted out after a narrow One-Day Cup win over Hampshire. There were no lyric sheets needed, and every player to a man thumped their bat on the floor in time to the beat.
forever in our hearts https://t.co/SHe42zflgb pic.twitter.com/2uFbVMJmip
— DAISY CUTTER (@daisycutterzine) July 26, 2026
The SunRisers video is by no means the only example of the kind of content which risks alienating an already uneasy audience. A reel of Chris Jordan reading out a scripted account of ‘what the South means to me’, in which he describes the Southern Brave badge as one which “makes you stand tall,” particularly stands out for woodenness. Or the photo of Sanjiv Goenka, Chairman of RPSG Group, posted by Manchester Super Giants, holding a ten pound note and a shiny iPhone on a private balcony celebrating the men’s win at Old Trafford. Their admin stopped short of captioning it ‘let them eat cake’.
But with the extreme amounts of money now on offer in the competition, it’s the players themselves who are becoming vessels for this inauthenticity. While SunRisers’ Leeds are literally singing for their supper, endless reels of viral trends and filters are populating every feed. “I had a pretty embarrassing one that went out yesterday that was like, ‘what sound does the ball make off the bat, and you had to make a stupid sound,” said Lauren Winfield-Hill, on Wisden Women’s Cricket Weekly podcast. “That was pretty shameful, but I think you’ve just got to embrace it.”
“I’d definitely say the content feels quite IPL in terms of, ‘can you just do this TikTok? Can you do this content? We’ve got a photoshoot after training.’ It’s just a lot more active in that space. But we’re really lucky at the Sunrisers group. The owner is awesome, not in your face.”
No one’s heart bleeds for players being paid tens or hundreds of thousands for five weeks of cricket, before flying off to the next league to take home a similar pay cheque. But the continued output of forced allegiance to a team they’re bonded through by money alone reveals the growing emptiness of the competition, and of the second tier of franchise leagues as a whole.
Perhaps the emptiness doesn’t matter. There were 22,000 in for the London derby at The Oval this week, Oval Invincibles fans clearly not alienated by the idea of watching Sam Curran play in Mumbai blue. For a casual cricket fan, looking for an evening out in London, the substance beneath the show will mean very little. But, if it continues to rest purely on a bed of money, that surface will eventually start to crack. Regardless of the capital behind every other successful franchise league, their connections to their publics are stronger than The Hundred’s ever has been.
Oval Invincibles were among the few teams who managed to establish a fixed brand identity through their on-field success. In other parts of the country, those bonds had grown over five seasons of sustained effort. Now, new teams, with new faces, kits and identities are straining to create an artificial connection to both audiences abroad with allegiances to team names, and those at home coming to watch.
Ultimately, the first glimpse of The Hundred under new ownership has confirmed the trade-off the ECB made when selling the franchises. In exchange for an enormous amount of money which might save several counties, a meaningful asset has been cut adrift. Welcome to the best part of the English summer, come and watch the best players in the world, just ignore the emptiness behind their sunglasses.
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