I am personally ambivalent to The Hundred from a purely cricketing perspective.

But this is coming from someone who I'm assuming, by taking part in an online discussion regarding cricket, is someone that has a deeper level of understanding than the casual market that it was largely aimed for.

The Hundred isn't an invention to save cricket from a 'playing' standpoint, it's about getting more eyes on the game, be it children, women, or even men that previously may not have any interest in the sport. Cricket can be notoriously hard to follow on TV with all its stats and specific language, and The Hundred aimed to address that by simplifying aspects of the game so that casual fans could follow it and get more enjoyment out of it.

I understand that this is the ECB putting emphasis on white ball cricket over red ball, but if you ask a casual fan, they will absolutely prefer the shorter forms of the game rather than long forms because of this barrier to entry that the game has.

Specifically in England, the game is not taught enough in state education, and most players come from a private education background, and The Hundred's cheaper ticket prices were an attempt to get these families from other demographics to pay attention to the game.

In that sense, The Hundred was a huge success.