The Hundred returns on Tuesday, remade by IPL owners and its first auction
The Hundred is back at the Kia Oval on Tuesday with three teams now owned by IPL franchises, a first-ever auction behind the squads, and MI London chasing a fourth straight men’s title.
Jul 18, 2026
The Hundred is back on Tuesday, and the version that starts at the Kia Oval looks less like the ECB’s homegrown experiment and more like an outpost of the Indian Premier League. Three of the eight teams now answer to IPL owners, the old player draft has been scrapped for an auction, and the men’s champions have swapped one of the tournament’s best names for a borrowed one. There is plenty to sort through before a ball of 100-ball cricket is bowled.
MI London, the side that spent three summers winning the men’s title as Oval Invincibles, open their defence against Sunrisers Men in the evening game on July 21. The women’s holders, Sunrisers Leeds, get the whole tournament underway earlier that afternoon at the same ground. Both carry new identities into a competition that runs through to finals day at Lord’s on August 16.
IPL money moves in
The rebrands are the change you notice first. Oval Invincibles are now MI London, funded by the Ambani family’s Mumbai Indians. Manchester Originals have become Manchester Super Giants under the RPSG Group, the company behind Lucknow’s IPL franchise. Northern Superchargers are Sunrisers Leeds, tied to the Sun Group that owns Sunrisers Hyderabad. Southern Brave, Birmingham Phoenix, London Spirit, Trent Rockets and Welsh Fire fill out the eight.
For Indian viewers the pull is obvious. The names, the colours and in places the recruitment now echo IPL sides they already follow, and the money flowing in has quietly turned a summer novelty into something with serious weight behind it.
An auction, not a draft
The deeper shift is in how the squads were built. For the first time the tournament used a live auction, staged in London on March 11 and 12, in place of the draft that had run since the competition launched. Uncapped England all-rounder James Coles went to London Spirit for £390,000, the most any player has cost in the tournament’s history. On the women’s side the salary cap was doubled to £880,000, and fees climbed across the board as a result.
MI London leaned on continuity, holding on to Sam Curran, Will Jacks and Rashid Khan and pre-signing Nicholas Pooran. Manchester Super Giants kept Jos Buttler, Noor Ahmad and Heinrich Klaasen together. Those two squads, thick with white-ball specialists, are why most previews have them among the sides to beat.
What to watch
MI London’s men are chasing a fourth straight title, a run that would stand up against any dynasty in franchise cricket. Whether the auction has narrowed the gap on them is the season’s first real question. The women’s competition, where Sunrisers Leeds defend and Birmingham Phoenix have built a side around Ellyse Perry and Alice Capsey, has tended to give up the tighter title race.
Each team plays eight group games before the knockouts, with the second and third-placed sides meeting in an eliminator on August 14 and the final at Lord’s two days after that. For all the noise about owners and auctions, the cricket still has four weeks to settle who actually walks away with the trophy.