Manchester Super Giants seamer Grace Ballinger takes a closer look at a revamped Hundred which begins on Tuesday.

Three days on from winning the T20 Blast title with The Blaze, Grace Ballinger, now of the Manchester Super Giants, takes a closer look at The Hundred which starts on Tuesday. Slightly earlier than last year, this edition of The Hundred kicks off in London on Tuesday, where two of the teams bought by IPL franchises, MI London and Sunrisers Leeds, will face each other at The Oval. The Hundred looks different to how it has for the past few years, and nobody, players included, really knows how it will play out. This is the first year of privatisation within the tournament. Whilst it was previously centrally owned by the ECB, the eight teams are now all owned independently, after the host counties had the option to sell either the entirety, or part, of their side to independent buyers. This privatisation manifests itself in many ways, but the essence of the tournament has remained the same. The eight host grounds have stayed, and some teams have kept their original names. Many of the brands that have been built over the past few years, on the other hand, have been totally transformed. When the privatisation was announced, I was not really sure how it would affect me as a player.