As The Weekly enters the nervous ninety’s for the third time (290th edition), this week the ECB confirmed the names of the eight teams for the new fast-paced cricketing format, The Hundred. The concept is straight forward enough, each team bowls 100 balls and the team with the most runs at the end wins. Each of the eight teams have already had their picks of England’s international stars, with Ben Stokes, Joe Root and Jofra Archer set to be involved for Northern Superchargers, Trent Rockets and Southern Brave respectively. You’ll have to wait until October 20th to find out where the rest of the world’s elite will be playing. Steve Smith and David Warner have both made themselves available for selection and will be looking for a slightly more friendly English reception than the one they received this summer. The tournament, which is still a year away, has already hit the headlines due to the unsavoury (no pun intended) kit designs and lead sponsors. Each team is sponsored by a crisp, popcorn or nut company, sparking many complaints about the use of junk food branding for sports. And to add insult to injury, the likes of Joe Root will have to wear a luminous yellow kit with the Skips crisps logo blazoned on the front. What has cricket come to?!

It may or may not surprise you to hear that London’s housing market is no longer in ‘a bubble.’ UBS released their Real Estate Bubble Index on Monday, a report that puts the housing market into a long-term perspective, and tracks the risk of property price bubbles in cities around the world. The index measures the housing market of twenty-four global cities and marks them as undervalued, fair valued, overvalued or bubble risk. The capital has been pushed down UBS's rankings and out of the 'bubble risk' category for the first time in four years with London house prices dipping 10% below their mid-2016 peak. Whilst UBS still ranked the London market as ‘over valued’, the bank suggested ‘the days when house prices soared by 50% between 2012 and 2016 are long gone.’ The same can’t be said for Munich, which was ranked as the most overvalued housing market in the world, with low interest rates to blame for their level of bubble risk. The Bubble Index comes the same week as KPMG forecast that UK house prices will drop by 6.2% if the UK leaves the EU without a deal on October 31st. The same report stated that homeowners in Northern Ireland will see the value of their homes drop by an unnerving 7.5% if no deal is agreed. All facts that are unlikely to sway Boris Johnson as he navigates an increasingly erratic course towards Brexit. Deal or no deal.

Isn’t it irritating when two people in the same office or social situation have the same name? Mention one and both come running? Well… if you’d asked for Nigel at the front desk of the Fleece Inn in Worcestershire on Thursday night, you’d have been met by 433 different people! The pub’s landlord, Nigel Smith organised a record breaking gathering for the most people named Nigel in the same room. His aim? To put the name Nigel back on the map, share Nigel stories and celebrate their ‘Nigelness.’ This was after 2016 was dubbed a ‘Nigel free year’, with no babies in the UK being given the name. Gratifyingly for those worried about the future of Nigel, the youngest namesake to attend was only 7 months old, whilst one Nigel had travelled all the way from Texas to be there! Local MP Nigel Nuddleston was in attendance, however The Weekly understands that not all politicians sharing this name were welcomed to the event…