Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow are two of the biggest superstars of England cricket at the moment, but both of them have decided to stay away from England’s franchise white ball competition, The Hundred. While Stokes has been quite vocal about the scheduling and scheduling is considered to be the main reason why he has withdrawn, Bairstow has decided to withdraw citing the same reason as well.
Ben Stokes featured in only 4 out of the 12 white ball games that England played this summer, while Jonny Bairstow featured in 9 of them, apart from the 4 test matches against New Zealand and India respectively where both of them featured.
The England cricket fanbase is divided into two sections over their new competition, The Hundred, not just because it’s a completely new format and many rules of the format are not quite aligned with the fundamentals of the game, but also because this competition goes against the traditional county set-up of English cricket.
The teams in The Hundred competition have been classified into 8 franchises, which are all currently owned by England Cricket Board (ECB) itself, but there is an intention of selling the ownership of these franchises to private corporates in the future.
Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow are being hailed by traditional England fans
The traditional England cricket fans are against the competition and Stokes and Jonny Bairstow are being praised by many of them for giving test cricket more preference over the franchise tournament, as both players will be available for the test series against South Africa.
Jonny Bairstow pulled out of 'The Hundred' as he wants to prepare for the Test series against South Africa.
Advertisement— Mufaddal Vohra (@mufaddal_vohra) August 2, 2022
I do admire Jonny Bairstow though for prioritising the #ENGvSA Test Series rather than playing for the Hula Hoops or Welsh Fire whatever they are called in #TheHundred Franchises will NEVER Win!!
Advertisement— Lionesses Roar🦁🦁🦁 (@YouBearsssssss) August 3, 2022
Another important point about Ben Stokes and Jonny Bairstow is that both of them are centrally contracted England players in red-ball cricket and they were not given any separate contracts for The Hundred competition, while those England players, who are not centrally contracted in the red ball game, were given The Hundred contracts through the draft system.
However, none of the two players cited anything related to the contract situation while withdrawing from the competition and withdrew citing just the fatigue factor.
