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.

New team names, new kits, new owners – the 2026 edition of The Hundred is here!

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.

The one inarguable benefit for the players, especially in the female game, is the jump in salaries.

For instance, my salary last year was £16,000, and this summer it has increased to £42,500 for the tournament.

The only other thing that has been apparent so far, is instead of everything being centrally managed by the ECB, management is now under the control of the independent franchises.

For example, last year every kit was New Balance, whereas this year, there are a range of kit brands.

The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) is to require all players to undergo genetic sex testing in order to compete on the WTA Tour.

In the latest edition of its women’s eligibility policy, which will come into effect on Tuesday, players will be required to provide a cheek swab, blood or saliva sample to test for the presence of the SRY gene which is part of the Y chromosome and causes male characteristics to develop.

Players will be tested just once in their lifetime and only a negative result, showing no presence of the gene, will permit them to compete on the Tour.

If they test positive, players will face further medical assessment before being allowed to play.

The new policy also requires players to sign a document that states they could face disciplinary action if they refuse testing.

The WTA’s previous policy, last updated in 2024, allowed transgender women to compete on the Tour if they had lowered their testosterone levels to below 2.5 nmol/L continuously for the previous two years.

There are no known transgender women currently playing on the WTA Tour.

“The WTA’s women’s eligibility policy is designed to promote equal athletic opportunities in women’s professional tennis and maintain fair competition for all players participating in WTA tournaments,” the governing body said.

“Since first being introduced in 1975, the eligibility policy has undergone periodic review in light of developments across international sport.

“Following the most recent review, which included consultation with WTA members and evolving standards across women’s sport, the WTA board approved an updated WTA women’s eligibility policy beginning in 2026 based on biological sex.”

It added: “The WTA recognises that this is a sensitive and complex issue and is committed to treating all players with dignity and implementing the policy in a respectful and thoughtful way.”

The policy change comes a year after World Athletics announced new regulations – brought into effect in September 2025 – requiring athletes wanting to compete in the female category for world ranking competitions to take a one-time gene test.

World Boxing also approved the use of the SRY test in May 2025 when it introduced mandatory sex testing for all athletes wanting to compete in the women’s category.

SPA, Belgium — The contrast in emotions of Mercedes’ title-fighting drivers could not have been starker after the Belgian Grand Prix.

With all the rightful exuberance of a 19-year-old, Kimi Antonelli celebrated on the podium after his victory at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, spraying his fellow podium finishers in champagne before cooling himself off by pouring the rest of the bottle over his head, a satisfied look on his face.

Why wouldn’t he be happy? Antonelli had just won his first race in over a month, capping off a dominant weekend where he’d also started from pole and led two of the event’s three practice sessions.

Yes, Charles Leclerc had spent a period of the race ahead of Antonelli thanks to a well-timed pit stop under the virtual safety car activation, but there was never any realistic chance of his Ferrari keeping the charging Italian back.

George Russell’s race hadn’t even lasted a full lap. Contact with Lewis Hamilton at the Les Combes chicane, having slipped back into the Ferrari’s clutches due to a lack of engine electrical power on the long straights before this point in the first sector, sent Russell’s car spinning into the gravel.

There was no hiding his despondency speaking to reporters afterwards. He said he’d become “numb to the disappointment” after his third retirement of the season.

But this was Antonelli’s weekend, one where he seized further control of the title race.

In one race, the points gap to the chasing Russell doubled from 25 to 50, equivalent to two race wins without reply. Hamilton, who finished the race in fourth, is now Antonelli’s closest challenger, 45 points back.

It’s not even Antonelli’s biggest lead this year. After his win in Monaco, his fifth in a row at that stage, he was 66 points clear. That was before reliability setbacks at Barcelona and Silverstone allowed Russell — who’d suffered his own misfortune in Canada and Monaco — to close up.

But the fresh swing in Antonelli’s favor at Spa felt extra critical in the story of this year’s title race.

Regardless of Russell’s own struggles, be it the mysterious issue with his engine costing him straight-line speed to Antonelli, or sheer bad luck in battle early in the race, Antonelli proved on one of F1’s greatest tracks that he’s simply a step ahead.

And he has been for a little while, regardless of the points swings.

“The momentum has always been there despite what happened in the previous races,” Antonelli said in the news conference that followed his Spa victory. “That’s why I just need to take it one weekend at a time, because you never know what can happen.”

George Russell after his crash with Lewis Hamilton early in the Belgian GP. (John Thys / AFP via Getty Images)

It was just another weekend where Russell didn’t seem able to respond to anything Antonelli did. It was the same story at Silverstone, only for Antonelli’s wheel cover failure to cause his race to unravel there in the closing stages. And Antonelli would’ve beaten Russell in Barcelona as well, without his engine problem late on.

Since their wheel-to-wheel battle in Canada that ended early thanks to Russell’s engine problem, only in Austria (where Russell won) has the British driver looked even slightly ahead of Antonelli.

It has dispelled the anticipated narrative of 2026. This was the year for which Russell had waited his entire eight-year F1 career. To finally get his hands on a car capable of fighting for a world championship, one Mercedes finally delivered him with the W17 model.

But it’s his teenage teammate using that car better.

The engine straight line speed issue Russell has faced does, of course, need to be considered when exploring the performance gap at Spa. Toto Wolff, Mercedes’ boss, told reporters after the race the team believed it accounted for “half the gap, or a little bit more, that he had to Kimi” over this weekend.

After addressing Russell’s engine issues in the first few questions of his post-race press briefing, Wolff welcomed a chance to speak warmly of the Mercedes win, even joking whether the microphone should be passed to the Italian members of the media corps so they could ask about Antonelli.

Because Antonelli’s success had to be recognized, especially as it was here at Spa 12 months ago where Wolff’s decision to replace Hamilton, the seven-time world champion and cornerstone of Mercedes’ modern success, with a teenager was really tested.

Antonelli was in a mid-season slump, scoring points just twice in nine races. At Spa, he was last in sprint qualifying and then only 18th in main race qualifying. Footage of him clearly tearful in the media pen after that session summed up the struggles of a rookie trying to find his way.

So much has changed in that year. Now he is delivering the kind of form that makes him much more than a novelty, a youngster getting his first win or leading the world championship for the first time.

Mercedes F1 team boss Toto Wolff. (Max Slovencik / APA / AFP via Getty Images)

He’s a fearsome force in the title fight which is increasingly under his control.

Wolff acknowledged Sunday that Antonelli’s first season struggles were “as expected,” with his best performances interrupted by errors. But both Wolff and Mercedes knew that a lot of progress would come through Antonelli’s growing familiarity of how the team and F1 worked in year two.

“But what was not expected is the serenity and structure that he brought into his game,” Wolff said of Antonelli.

“With Kimi, whether the session was good or bad, you don’t see a difference in emotions in the debrief (with Mercedes’ engineers). It is absolutely transactional. ‘What is the problem? How do we solve it? How do we move on?’ That is new.

“When he wins, you can see the absolute excitement of a 19-year-old. And at the same time, if he fails to deliver results — in Barcelona, when we had the car stop, or at Silverstone — he comes back in and says to the team, ‘this is a mechanical sport, these things can happen.’

“That is very impressive to see. His mindset and his attitude is probably one of the main drivers that has allowed his talent to shine so early in his career.”

That matter-of-fact approach was clear in Antonelli’s answer about the championship battle with Russell post-race at Spa. There’s no overconfidence following a win. And no spiralling following a setback.

As Wolff said, it’s transactional.

“I just need to maximise the performance every time and try to do my best whenever I get in the car,” said Antonelli. “Then you see what the balance is at the end of the year. But with these new cars and new regulations, there’s so much going on and so many unpredictable things that can happen.”

The summer break, which follows Sunday’s Hungarian GP, will offer the entire grid a chance to take a breath and reset. For Antonelli, he’ll want to maintain his serenity, knowing it’s the key to his hopes of becoming the youngest world champion in F1 history.

There’s a long way to go. But even when Russell’s engine issues are fixed and his luck turns, Antonelli already has the mindset, speed, and now restored momentum that will make him hard to beat.