The Hundred: Second season to have additional stewards and cameras to monitor crowd behavior
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) will take extra steps to ensure that the Hundred matches are family-friendly and reduce anti-social behavior. As a result, the board will deploy more stewards and cameras to identify drunken fans.
The first season of the 100-ball event saw a handful of incidents of rowdy behavior amongst crowds, fuelled by excess consumption of alcohol. The Marylebone Cricket Club also prohibited members of the public from bringing alcohol into Lord's after feedback from the first two matches at the venue.
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The competition's managing director Sanjay Patel revealed deploying additional stewarding and cameras to monitor crowds' behavior. This is critical in any fixture, whether it's the forthcoming edition of the competition or the international games.
Patel said, as quoted by The Telegraph:
"We have increased stewarding which is something, again, coming out of Covid it was very difficult to get the right stewarding. This year we'll be able to do that. We've got additional cameras, watching crowds and monitoring behaviour. Clearly, the venues where this responsibility sits with we are working with every day.
"We cannot have any antisocial behaviour - it doesn't matter whether it's the Hundred, international cricket, the T20 Blast full stop. We just don't want that in our grounds. For all our cricket, we want to stamp it out."
Rowdy scenes in the game between the London Spirit and Trent Rockets led to the ground's bars closing half an hour before the end. The Oval had also considered creating alcohol-free zones for the upcoming season of the tournament.
"There were isolated incidents last year" - The Hundred's Managing Director
Sanjay Patel underlined that by looking at the embarrassing incidents last year, he believes there is a need not to repeat them. He added:
"There were isolated incidents last year - we're very aware of that. If you look at our demographic, that is something we have to get right this year. There's a few things in place - non-alcoholic stands are available, there's family stands as well which we didn't have last year. So families have an option to sit among other families which I think will help."
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Patel also confirmed that England's star players like Jason Roy and Jos Buttler will be available for the entire second season of The Hundred. The men's fixtures will start on August 3, while the women's fixtures will commence on August 11.