The England and Wales Cricket Board will meet representatives from the country’s 420 professional players next month following a backlash over its new 100‑ball competition.

The announcement last week that the ECB’s new eight-team tournament from 2020 would not be played using Twenty20 but rather a reduced version of the format is understood to have caused anger and disbelief among committee members of the Professional Cricketers Association.

The player representatives from the 18 first-class counties that comprise this panel, along with two from the men’s and women’s national teams, were given 24 hours’ notice via a WhatsApp group that a big development was coming, but were offered no detail beyond this advisory.

When news of The Hundred then came to light on Thursday, the thread is said to have gone into meltdown with a string of negative responses from around the county squads that reflected disappointment at the new format and annoyance that it had been presented publicly as a fait accompli.

One PCA representative said that words such as “joke” and “gimmick” dominated the exchange, with derision over the format’s 10-ball over that, after 15 traditional six-ball overs, takes each innings to a round 100. Durham’s PCA representative, Chris Rushworth, tweeted: “What a load of bollocks.”

There is also frustration that, having previously been sold a glamorous T20 tournament to rival the Indian Premier League or Australia’s Big Bash League, the players were now getting a huge unknown that also goes against the principle of domestic cricket mirroring that played at international level.

In response to the news last week the PCA chairman, Daryl Mitchell, released a statement that confirmed he and the PCA non-executive chairman, Matthew Wheeler, had met the ECB three weeks earlier, when the 100‑ball concept was first floated, but had simply agreed to be “open-minded”.

The statement added that the PCA would now begin a consultation process with its members but there is a suspicion among the county representatives as to why the debate is being held after the event. The ECB will now meet them at Edgbaston on 8 May to go over the plans but faces a tough sell.

It comes at a tricky time for the union, too, with the chief executive, David Leatherdale, signed off for personal reasons and continuing resentment among members over the loss of the increment contract system that rewarded players with a cash sum after totting up a set number of international appearances.