Sunrisers Leeds – Corporate Cricket Gone Crazy

Just last week, the Hundred franchise team, the Manchester Originals, changed their name to the Manchester Super Giants, unveiling their new logo containing an elephant with wings. This has received massive backlash on social media with many people wondering how just many flying elephants Mancunians see on a regular basis. As a Leeds resident for most of the year, I similarly struggle to see the correlation between the new ‘Sunrisers’ franchise name and the somewhat greyer city. Like the Red Bull franchise across many other sports, the RPSG Group purchased a 70% stake in Manchester side and prompted the renaming of the club. They also own the Lucknow Super Giants and Durban Super Giants in the Indian and South African T20 leagues respectively, while the ‘Sunrisers’ name is shared with Indian team ‘Sunrisers Hyderabad’ (where temperatures average over 36 degrees Celsius in summer). These changes have prompted more serious reflection as to the trajectory of British domestic cricket.

The Hundred has always proved a controversial talking point among cricket fans with its new rules and ‘more bang for buck’ entertainment marketing. While it has drawn massive crowds over its last 6 seasons, many pundits and fans alike have argued that the short-format focus of the last decade has been detrimental to the state of English Test cricket – the 5-day longer format. England’s resounding 4-1 defeat to Australia in the recent Ashes exemplified their grievances. The two main domestic competitions down under are the BBL T20 league, and the Sheffield Shield (with List A Test cricket also deeply engrained in their culture). Compared to the English county set-up, which competes with the Hundred via the T20 Blast for short-format dominance, the focus is much more on Test cricket, with short-format being a fun way for cricketers to earn more on the side. 

The opposite is coming to fruition in England as increasing focus is being put on the short-form franchise game whether fans like it or not. As founders of the sport, English fans take pride in Test cricket and, for many, listening to Test Match Special on the radio is a quintessential cricketing experience – this history and pride is being neglected by the English Cricket Board in favour of shallow corporate cricket. 

Words by James Morgan