It was the day that transformed the business model of English cricket. On January 31 last year, a consortium of technology executives won a four-way auction for a share of London Spirit which valued the franchise at an eye-watering £295 million. The winning bid for a 49% stake far outstripped expectations, bringing £144 million into the English game overnight.
During the bidding, senior figures within Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the proprietors of Lord's, had watched anxiously from the Mayfair offices of the US investment bank Raine, along with ECB officials. Among them was Julian Metherell, a member for 40 years and a former Goldman Sachs partner, who will take over from Ed Smith as the club's president later this year.
MCC had narrowed the field to four potential partners: Cain International, Lancer Capital, the RPSG Group and Cricket Investor Holdings Ltd, now known as the 'Tech Titans'. Cain later partnered with Ares to buy a stake in Trent Rockets, while Lancer is the family office of Manchester United co-owner Avram Glazer and also owns Desert Vipers in the ILT20.
Cain and Lancer dropped out soon after the bidding started, leaving the RPSG Group and the Tech Titans. "It went up and up and up, in £3 million increments," Metherell recalls. "Each side had 15 minutes to respond to the other's bid. Sometimes they'd come straight back, and at other times they'd run the clock down - a bit like DRS. We got to £295 million, and I had a pit in my stomach."
Spirit was the third of the eight franchises to sell, and its valuation was nearly half of the other seven teams' put together, which MCC saw as a reflection of the prestige and mystique associated with Lord's.
"We knew there was a premium for Lord's, but we didn't know it was going to be that coveted," Metherell says. "Our partners have paid a lot of money for this. One of the challenges that we all have is that now we've got to grow this tournament, and make it really valuable."
The Tech Titans, Metherell says, have been "phenomenal partners" over the last 18 months. "We are looked up to in the world of cricket, so we needed to find someone who we were comfortable with, and confident would be a true partner and share our passion and vision for what we're trying to create here… It is a great partnership. They're adding massive value."
We are speaking in the Edrich Restaurant at London Spirit's first home matchday since MCC and the Tech Titans assumed operational control from the ECB. Metherell is the chair of the new seven-person board - four from MCC, three from the consortium - and several investors are decked out in new Spirit kit as they enjoy the finest hospitality that Lord's has to offer.
As luck would have it, the Tech Titans are up against RPSG Group once again: Sanjiv Goenka, the group's chairman, brushed off the disappointment of the Lord's auction to buy a stake in Manchester Originals - now Super Giants - in partnership with Lancashire. The only difference this time is the result, with Spirit losing a close men's game after their women were thrashed.
There is a buzz at Lord's, and a noticeably different crowd to the one that attended England's Test against New Zealand here in early June. But the attendance of 23,847 is slightly disappointing, down from 26,013 on Spirit's opening home matchday last year. It reflects the scale of upheaval in the Hundred, with teams now taking control of ticketing and marketing.
Metherell is confident that MCC members will learn to love the Hundred. There is a nod to them in Spirit's kit - navy blue, with egg-and-bacon trim - and he believes the quality of cricket will ultimately appeal. "If you walk around the ground, you can see that the members are here from their ties - but most importantly, they are bringing their children and grandchildren."
"That mix of old MCC - egg and bacon - and the new really is a metaphor for what we're trying to do here. We, as a club, want to be at the forefront of what's happening in world cricket, while mixing it with 239 years of extraordinary history. Actually, this is a very momentous day for us: this is the first time that an MCC professional franchise side has ever played."
He adds: "The big growth in audiences in the IPL was cricket fans coming to love the IPL. When you look at the two highest run-scorers in the IPL, it's [Virat] Kohli and Rohit Sharma, two of the greatest cricketers. If you love the game of cricket, how can you not enjoy watching [Dewald] Brevis, [Jos] Buttler, [Heinrich] Klaasen, [James] Rew, [Jonny] Bairstow play?"
Kohli and Sharma were at Lord's a few days before, playing what is likely to be their final international match on English soil in the third England vs India ODI. Yet neither is likely to feature in the Hundred anytime soon, since active Indian players are not allowed to feature in overseas short-form leagues by the BCCI.
"Of course, it's everyone's dream to see the world's best Indian players come and play here, but we're some way off that today," Metherell says. "It's very sad that the Indians can't play, but we've got the rest of the world to choose from. Look at the South Africans, Kiwis, Afghans and Pakistanis playing, while also keeping a strong nucleus of English players."
These are early days in the new era of London Spirit, and there is scope for a wide range of opportunities to emerge. For example, Satyan Gajwani, one of the 'Tech Titans', is involved in the consortium buying Royal Challengers Bengaluru (RCB). Metherell is reluctant to speculate on future possibilities since the deal is yet to close, but says: "It's something we will think about."
If anyone is likely to convince Kohli, who lives nearby in Notting Hill, to spend a season playing in the Hundred as his career winds down, it is Andy Flower and Mo Bobat, head coach and director of cricket respectively at both RCB and London Spirit. His involvement, however improbable, would be transformational to the value of the competition's broadcast rights.
Bobat was the first employee at Spirit under new ownership. He quickly recruited Flower to join him, with Jon Lewis (coach) and Heather Knight (general manager) appointed to their women's team. Flower's task is to put right Spirit's previous on-field record, which Metherell describes as "poor", though they have started with consecutive narrow defeats this year.
With the biggest home venue and highest valuation, Spirit are an attractive proposition commercially: as other teams scrambled for last-minute sponsorship deals, they launched partnerships with Barclays, one of the UK's biggest banks, and Uber. Metherell's hope is that the rest of the competition will catch up quickly.
"We want this to be a commercial success for our investors. We own 51%, so it's a very valuable asset for the MCC, which over time we want to become more valuable and then we would use that to invest further in this extraordinary ground. But we want our investors to make money over time, and to do that, you've got to fill grounds and enhance the fan experience.
"We all, as a tournament, have got to be able to appeal to broadcasters so they say, 'I've got to pay a lot more for this,' because 70-80% of the revenue for each team comes from Sky Sports. There is also an inter-dependency here: we could be wonderfully successful and sell Lord's out for every home game, but we need everyone else to do it… It has to be a genuine partnership, or else it won't be successful."