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The Hundred 2023 has finally landed — here’s what to expect

Everything you need to know about this year's tournament and all the action coming to Manchester.

Danny Jones Danny Jones - 2nd August 2023

Cricket’s newest and most exciting format, The Hundred, is back for the third year running and whether you hear this phrase all the time or not, it really is going to be bigger and better than ever.

The fast-paced and increasingly popular cricket series starts this month and our home team Manchester Originals get underway on Wednesday, 2 August, with the aim of going one better than last year and winning the whole thing.

Consisting of eight teams across seven of the UK’s biggest cities, The Hundred attracts the top women’s and men’s talent from across the world and it’s already becoming a sporting phenomenon.

With that being said, The Hundred 2023 is about much more than just cricket, so here’s everything you need to know to prepare for this year’s tournament.

The Hundred Fixtures

Getting underway on Monday, 1 August with the opening matches between the Trent Rockets and Southern Brave over in Nottingham — with the reigning men’s champions winning by six runs while Brave women’s team beat the Rockets by 27 — the remaining 32 matches will take place over the next month.

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Manchester Originals kick off their campaign on Tuesday, 2 August against Welsh Fire in Cardiff and, in case you weren’t aware already, one of the best parts about The Hundred is that every round is a double-header of men’s and women’s games, meaning you get twice the action.

Your first double dose of the Originals at their home comes on Saturday, 5 August, when the Manc team take on London Spirit at the Emirates Old Trafford Cricket Ground — one of Manchester’s favourite and most iconic sporting arenas.

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You can see the full list of fixtures HERE.

manchester originals squad the hundred 2023
The full Originals squad at The Hundred 2023 launch event
manchester originals fixtures
The women’s team get underway at 11am on 2 August
Credit: Manchester Originals

Live music and entertainment

In between the 100-ball games, the action doesn’t stop though; The Hundred is known for hosting top-notch live music and entertainment all day long and this year’s lineup is as good as any.

As well as highly impressive light shows and pyrotechnics before and after the games, you’ve got DJ sets from our resident DJ Roesh and live performances from artists at each matchday through The Hundred’s partnership with BBC Music Introducing.

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In terms of who’ll be playing in Manchester, you’ll be treated to local chart-toppers, The Lottery Winners, who are returning for the third year on the trot to serenade their city, as well as the likes of Manc-born R&B star, Akemi Fox, rising hip-hop and spoken word artist, Antony Szmierek, just to name a few.

You can see the full lineup for the four rounds of fixtures being played at the Emirates Old Trafford down below and make sure to check out our Kendal Calling interview with the Leigh legends while you’re at it too.

Sky Zero’s Summer

Working with Sky Sports’ Summer of Sustainability campaign and Transport for Greater Manchester, Manchester Originals are encouraging fans to travel green to their home fixtures this season. Emirates Old Trafford is even allowing fans to recreate the ‘Walk of Fame’ to the wicket at Lord’s Cricket Ground, which will be filmed so they can share with their friends and family whilst inspiring them to travel green and play their part in protecting the sports they love.

Along with other green measures for 2023, they’ll be benchmarking on four of the matchdays to assess the impact of their sustainable efforts.

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The Hundred remains an affordable day out with adult tickets starting from £15, under 16s just £5 and any kids under 6 are absolutely free. Ace, right?

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You can grab yours HERE.

This also means you have all the more pennies to spend on food and drink on the day, as well as copping your 2023/24 Manchester Originals kit in time for their first game at the Emirates Old Trafford on Saturday, 5 August, where we’re sure we’ll be treated to them smashing non-stop sixes.

It’s Manchester’s year, the men’s and the women’s, we can feel it. They certainly made a quick and easy job of it when we had a go at playing them…

For all the latest news, events and goings on in Greater Manchester, subscribe to The Manc newsletter HERE.

Featured Image — The Hundred

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Eyewear brand IOLLA are offering one-to-one glasses styling sessions at Hatch

Danny Jones Danny Jones IOLLA eyewear Hatch pop-up Manchester glasses shops

Our favourite eyewear brand IOLLA has just celebrated it’s first anniversary since opening up right here in Manchester and as part of the birthday celebrations, they’ve opened up an exclusive glasses styling pop-up event over at Hatch.

While glasses manufacturers started out in Scotland, Mancs have had the pleasure of their innovative eyewear offerings and expertise from their showroom on St Anns Square for over 12 months now and although you always get a very bespoke and personalised experience from their flagship English store, they’re always looking to branch out further.

So that’s why they’ve decided to set up a one-of-a-kind ‘Style Session’ over Hatch with the hope of spreading the word at the beloved independent trading village before it closes at the end of the month.

Known not only for its food and drinks vendors, student nights and live music but countless indie businesses selling clothes, vintage goods, beauty services and more. Now, for the rest of this week only, you can even sort yourself some glasses or shades to suit your style perfectly.

Credit: The Manc Group/IOLLA

The temporary ‘Style Station’ in Hatch is giving customers an insight into the brand’s ethos
by displaying glasses on hangers, grouped together by style and shape to show how you can
build your eyewear wardrobe and have different glasses for all looks and occasions.

Whether it’s a regular pair for the office or something more flashy for a night out, customers will get the chance to experience a one-to-one consultation session to find the right frames for the occasion with one of the brand’s experienced stylists.

Just like no two faces are the same, every combination of handmade IOLLA frames and lenses is
unique, and choosing the perfect pair relies on the perfect balance of fit and style to suit your face shape.

With a range spanning prescription and non-prescription, as well as glasses and sleek shades in all the same style, IOLLA offers an option for everyone.

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The limited-time-only pop-up is running from 12-7pm until Sunday, 24 September exclusively over at Hatch, but don’t worry if you don’t manage to find the time to make it over before the end of the week as you can always head to their St Anns Square showroom to try-on the collection of IOLLA glasses.

The best part is, it doesn’t matter what pair you pick: they all cost just £85 with no added fees and no unnecessary hassle. Did we mention that all their designs are completely unique, made with high-quality materials and handmade? Well, they are and that’s why we love them.

While we have your attention, we’re absolutely gutted to see Hatch as we know it shutting down but when we were last there, we thought we’d put together a fun little guide on how to spend the perfect day there.

Show this place and all of its amazing traders some love whilst you still can.

How to spend a perfect afternoon at Hatch – before it’s too late

For all the latest news, events and goings on in Greater Manchester, subscribe to The Manc newsletter HERE.

Featured Image — IOLLA/The Manc Group/Hatch (via Instagram)

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The Chemical Brothers’ Ed Simons on upcoming arena tour, forming in Manchester and how the city influenced them

Danny Jones Danny Jones who are the chemical brothers formed in manchester arena tour tickets

The Chemical Brothers are back and life is good. They never really went anywhere, per se, but they have a new album and a fast-selling UK arena tour, including a date right here in their musical home.

It always surprises us how many people are still unaware that the legendary electronic duo formed right here in Manchester and just how much of our city’s music influenced their unmistakable sound.

Having just released their new record, For That Beautiful Feeling — the tenth studio album in a career spanning nearly three and a half decades — it’s great to know that no matter how much they evolve, you can always spot their signature and that the Manc music scene an integral part in it.

Soon to embark on a fast-selling UK tour with a glorious homecoming at the AO Arena on 27 October, we had the immense pleasure of sitting down with one-half of The Chemical Brothers, Ed Simons, to chat all things past, present and future for one of Britain and the big beat genre’s biggest exports.

Back with more block rockin’ beats and another massive UK tour

So, how much are you looking forward to being back touring new music?

 ”It’s good to be going back indoors — it’s a big thing, you know, we play a lot of festivals; most of them are good but you get a much better sound [inside] and everyone’s in the same place and, hopefully, in the zone.

“[Post-Covid] A lot of people have still missed out on their first experiences of big loud music and big raucous crowds. Maybe some people are waiting to let go again and thrust into it.”

As for the album, first since 2019, what can you tell us about the direction you’ve gone in?

“Yep, well with performing live we really want to play the new music and just rest on what we’ve done before, we want to incorporate the two. It’s exciting for us. People have heard some of [the record] at summer festivals but now it’s is out there are lots of people that want to experience it for themselves.

“There’s always a core thing: some kind of secret thing between us about what we like about our music. It’s not so much a secret as it is the effect it has on other people but, hopefully, it’s evolving and the sound is still fresh. We don’t ever want people to say, ‘Oh, it’s just another Chemical Brothers record’, there has to be some quality to it.

“It’s a pretty rousing album and has the sense of people waking up again out of a long period where things still are difficult for a lot of people, but that sense of fragmentation that we went through in the lockdowns and what it’s like to come out of that.

“We made a lot of music in that period, but we’ve kind of concentrated on the stuff that feels the most rousing and has a bit of get up and provocation to feel alive again.”

The Chemical Brothers are bringing the new music to Manchester in just over a month.

Absolutely — the new singles like ‘No Reason’ definitely tap into that energy. What’s the reaction been like so far?

“Yeah, it’s been good. We had bits of and then had a sort of pressure to put it together into something we could play because we were about to DJ at fabric [in London] a few years ago at a charity gig for a friend of ours and the first time we played it at a club, even a really early version of it, you could feel it had an energy and sounded different. Great bassline too.

“It’s been rewarding and it’s been a really big live track for us this summer and we do a kind of live edit of it, which is fun and fresh.

“The track ‘Tell Me I’m Dreaming’ has also been a really big track. The visual that Flat Nose George [real name Adam Smith] and Marcus [Lyall] put together for that is really crazy, and, yeah, that’s been going down really well. I think that could be pretty huge when played indoors.

“We’ve had versions of it for a long time, but I think the first time we played it was actually at The Warehouse Project in 2021, I think? You know, when things were picking up again and it just immediately had that impact with the loops and the vocal.

“I just associate it with that WHP party in Manchester now and a few DJs have been playing it like Erol Alkan now too, so yeah, it’s kind of a big club track — a strange one but it works.”

chemical brothers arena tour manchester
chemical brothers manchester tickets
The kind of light shows Manchester and the AO Arena can expect (Credit: The Chemical Brothers via Instagram)

Foundations in 0161 and how 90s Manchester influenced The Chemical Brothers’ sound

Definitely, and it doesn’t get much bigger than the AO Arena but what other venues have got fond memories of?

“Well, I know there’s a lot of new venues but given that we’ve been playing Manchester since 1990, we’ve done most venues. We even used to DJ at the Old Steam Brewery [later became ScuBar] which I don’t even know if that still exists [it doesn’t] but yeah we’ve played the Arena and both Warehouses over the past few years and we just love them.

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“Victoria Warehouse and WHP are just amazing, you know. Manchester is our second home; we were students there and we’ve still got a lot of friends there.”

“I guess the best memory of the Arena”, Ed chuckled, “was when one of the security guards was walking us back after a said, ‘Corrr, I’ve not seen a crowd like that since Ricky Hatton was here”, adding that it’s a wise-crack that still gets brought up on tour and that all the gig staff here have a “proper good attitude”.

Not too bad a compliment, haha. What about other venues then? Any you’ve still got a soft spot for or have any lasting Manc music memories?

“Well, we were there with all the students and the early ‘Big Barn’ days at Manchester Academy, the indie disco, the house night in a house Thursday; the Wiggly Worm which Justin Robertson ran [went on to become the Millionaire Club] — we were just in and out of all those places and then ended up holding our own club nights.

“We’d hire everything from a swanky bar in town where we’d have to move all our speakers in, to setting up in Pizza Express in Didsbury where we used to go on and party as well.

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Ed and Tom back when they were starting. (Credit: Ed Simons via Instagram)

Amazing. Tell us a little bit about the early days and how you and Tom [Rowland] came to meet at uni.

“Yeah, at the University of Manchester in 1989. We met really early on, pretty much the first week through a mutual friend. We were on this tiny little course on medieval history, so there weren’t many of us, and then I think we were talking about wanting to play the Haçienda, which at that time was the big thing and we’d all heard about it.

“So yeah, we just kind of became friends because we were the only people in this course and we just wanted to go to the Haçienda and I think we ended up going every Friday from September to Christmas. We were just so into the music that Mike Pickering and Graeme Park were playing, and just the whole atmosphere. We also loved buying records together.

“Tom was actually in another band at the time called Ariel, so our thing was just DJing together at first and then after making some more friends about a year into our course we started putting on these nights around town and we got really friendly with a lot of DJs who worked at Eastern Bloc like Robertson and [Richard] ‘Moonboots‘.

It always comes back to Manchester

Ed ended the chat by reiterating that, like many artists who come through here either as natives or otherwise, “there’ll always be a big Manchester connection.”

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chemical brothers manchester days
Then.
chemical brothers tour
Now.
No matter how many years go by, the importance of those early Manchester days has never left The Chemical Brothers.

“We used to buy some really brilliant records that Moonboots would put aside for us and then when we came to London, we were suddenly DJing and playing all these cool records that no one else had heard.

“A really big part of our early career was building that bridge between Manchester and London, and, you know, we were around at the same time as The Stone Roses and we absolutely loved them — that first album had a huge influence.

“There was just that sense of if you’ve got an idea, just try and record it and get it out; there was a sort of can-do feeling about everything and we always feel indebted to that time we spent there. I think without being around all these people and artists printing a thousand white labels, we never would have been exposed to the culture and wouldn’t be coming back to the Arena 34 years later…

“Apparently the lecturer who did that medieval history course still starts his years by telling his students that they’re following in mine and Tom’s footsteps…”

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You can grab tickets to see The Chemical Brothers in Manchester at the AO Arena on 27 October HERE.

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For all the latest news, events and goings on in Greater Manchester, subscribe to The Manc newsletter HERE.

Featured Image — The Chemical Brothers (via Instagram)/Wikimedia Commons

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