Northants skipper Rossington excited by Hundred opportunity

The ECB’s new 100-ball format will belatedly start in July, a full year later than planned due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

It is a new competition that has split opinion in the cricketing world, with seemingly the vast majority of regular fans up and down the country not onside at all!

Many of the fans who are the lifeblood of the game, the members and season ticket holders of the 18 first-class counties, are giving the new tournament, that features eight newly-formed franchises, a bit of a pasting.

But The Hundred will be going ahead, and it will be featuring at least four Northants players as well as the club’s head coach.

Adam Rossington will play for the Lord’s-based London Spirit, whose assistant coach will be David Ripley.

They will be joined at Spirit by the Steelbacks’ T20 summer signing Mohammad Nabi, while Josh Cobb will turn out for the Welsh Fire and Brandon Glover for the Oval Invincibles.

Rossington, who was an original draft pick for London Spirit more than a year ago, is well aware that the competition has its detractors, but he is only looking at the positives.

“The opportunity to play with the best players, week in, week out, is going to be brilliant,” said Rossington, who is Northants’ red-ball skipper.

“I think you are always going to have your critics, and when T20 came in people were very sceptical about it, and look at it now.

“For me, there is no harm in trying The Hundred and seeing if it works.

“If it does work, then brilliant, if it doesn’t then you still have a brilliant T20 tournament here (the Vitality Blast) and there is nothing stopping you going back to it.

“I think the opportunity for players to go and learn from, and play with some of the world’s best can only be a good thing.

“Each team has three overseas players in there and with all the people involved I think it is going to be a good competition to be a part of.”

London Spirit will be coached by Australian legend Shane Warne, and captained by England World Cup winning skipper Eoin Morgan, and Rossington believes that his stint with the

Lord’s-based team, and those of Cobb and Glover elsewhere, could in the long run be of real benefit to Northants.

“It is brilliant to be able to go and pick the brains of people like that for four or five weeks, and to learn things,” said the 27-year-old.

“I think that is the good thing as a player, that you can learn and see if there is anything there that I can actually bring back to Northants and help, and I am sure Rips will be doing the same thing.

“It is always a positive to go and try something in a different environment and see what you can learn and pick up from it.”