Over the last few years, The Hundred have collaborated with BBC Music Introducing to showcase up and coming artists alongside the relatively new cricket event that garners a huge following. The musical acts play in between the women’s and men’s matches at cricket grounds up and down the country whilst thousands in the stands watch and potentially find their new favourite band.
With The Hundred on its way for an August start, in no particular order, here’s a quick look at some of the best acts to appear at Headingley, Trent Bridge and the like…
RAYE – The Oval, 2021
Where better to start off our list than with the latest British Artist of the Year, Raye. Before being propelled to stardom, scooping up 6 BRIT Awards this year, Raye featured on the first edition of the ‘Introducing bill. Performing her tune ‘Bed’ in between The Hundred clash between the Oval Invincible Women and the London Spirit Women, she no doubt garnered hundreds of new fans as she entertained the crowd. Check out her performance below:
SPORTS TEAM – Headingley, 2021
Staying in 2021, we’re next looking at Sports Team’s performance at Headingley as the Northern Superchargers took on Birmingham Pheonix, who ran out winners by 8 wickets with 26 balls remaining. This performance came after the bands’ debut album was released in the Covid lockdown and so could not be fully performed live to the masses upon initial production. Therefore, the band, being huge cricket fans and previously filming a performance at an empty Oval, jumped at the chance to perform in front of a full cricket crowd. Check out their performance of Here’s The Thing here:
BASTILLE – Lord’s, 2022
Now, we’ll move on to a band that, albeit, were massive at the time of their The Hundred performance. Bastille headlined the final in 2022, with member of the band ‘Woody’ in particular being ‘a massive cricket fan and loving what The Hundred has brought to the summer sporting schedule’. Bastille gave a particularly great showing at Lord’s, have a look at and listen to their performance of Good Grief and six times platinum Pompeii below:
SEA GIRLS – Trent Bridge, 2022
Sea Girls are the next performance we’ll look at – appearing at the Trent Bridge clash between Trent Rockets and Birmingham Pheonix not long after the release of their second studio album, Homesick. Although their performance has since been deleted by the BBC, check out a live session in which they performed their track, All I Want To Hear You Say:
DEADLETTER – Headingley, 2023
Rounding off our list of memorable performances, we move up to last season’s cricket festivities with a memorable show from Deadletter, who also appeared at Headingley. Here, the Invincibles saw off the Northern Superchargers. Catch them performing their hit single, Binge, below:
By Alfie Dunn:
(Featured image: Mark Hillary via Flickr – Lord’s cricket ground, London, August 5, 2006 – https://www.flickr.com/photos/markhillary/250663305)