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New York Times
3 days ago
- Sport
- New York Times
Why do Test cricketers wear white?
Cricket is a sport that clings to tradition. It's the reason some love it, the comforting and familiar sights and sounds representing a still point in a turning world. The most visually immediate of those traditions — in multi-day red-ball cricket at least — is the white clothing. While most team sports mandate differing colours so spectators can tell the sides apart, for much of its history, cricketers have played some form of the game wearing all white. Or at least a sort of off-white/cream colour otherwise only seen on the walls of municipal office blocks. Advertisement Note the use of 'much of its history'. It would be easy to think that white has been the prevalent colour from the very start of the game until the present day. But that isn't quite the case, and it actually took about 150 years to become uniform. In the 1700s, the earliest days of what we would recognise as cricket now, a gentleman would dress for a game of cricket as a gentleman would dress for any aspect of gentlemanly life. Frilled shirts, silk stockings and buckled shoes, naturally. As the game evolved further, white was worn, although reliable documentation about how prevalent it was is relatively tricky to find. Still, in a book called 'Bat, Ball, Cricket And All', published in 1950, the MCC's first full-time curator and historian Diana Rait Kerr wrote: 'White has apparently been the prevailing dress of cricketers from very early times. Other fashions, as we shall see, intruded at later periods, but only to yield again to the blameless livery of old; indeed, one of the remarkable features of cricket has been the manner in which its milky costume has prevailed over all others.' Poems, like 'Cricket, An Heroic Poem' written by James Love in 1744, refer to players 'in decent white, most gracefully array'd', while paintings like 'Cricket as played on the Artillery Ground' from 1743 (see above) depict the players in white shirts. This was probably a consequence of the relatively ad hoc nature of cricket back then. Rait Kerr wrote that, when playing the game, gentlemen 'threw down their wide-brimmed hats, coats and smocks, and left them with the scorers, or their waiting companions, to take care of'. Or, to put it another way, remove their outer garments and play in their undershirts, which were usually white. By the early 1800s, trousers had replaced breeches, but coats were still commonly worn, and top hats too, and colours started to creep in. The MCC initially adopted a light blue colour, before switching to the red and yellow that it is synonymous with today. Men would often wear sashes and colourful belts, and coloured shirts started to appear around the 1850s, players representing whatever institution they were most proud of coming from — public schools, universities — with shirts and slightly less formal caps. Advertisement 'If you go back to the 1840s, 1850s,' says Neil Robinson, the head of heritage and collections at the MCC, 'you'll see illustrations of what was the all-England XI, which was the first professional team that toured around the country, taking advantage of the new railway network to take high-quality cricket to areas other than the south east of England. They used to wear white trousers, but shirts with pink or red spots.' It wasn't until the 1880s that, gradually, white shirts and trousers became the standard uniform for the respectable cricketer. But why? It would be great to tell you some romantic or sentimental story behind cricketers wearing white. Perhaps it was in tribute to a lost love of an MCC member. Maybe it was a reference to moral purity, an early visual indicator of the spirit of cricket. Could it have been a royal decree, Queen Victoria deciding that she would like to see her cricketing subjects gleaming in the English sun? Alas not. The primary motivations behind the prevailing colour for cricketers' clothing being white are rather boringly practical. Cricket is a summer sport, thus, in theory, games take place in the heat. White is generally regarded as being the best colour to wear in hot weather because it reflects heat, while darker shades absorb it. So in the interests of protecting the players from elevated temperatures as much as possible, white became commonplace and, eventually, uniform. That wasn't the only reason. White is also the best colour to contrast with the red ball. It is also probably the colour that most people had ready access to. It was also easiest to make uniform throughout the game. But broadly speaking, it became prevalent because of the heat thing. But it's never actually been formalised. There's nothing in the laws of the game specifying that Test teams must wear white, and there never has been. It just became a convention that has stuck. 'There's not a great deal of written evidence as to why white came into popular use,' says Robinson. 'A bit like cricket itself, whites just evolved into the accepted format that we know today. Advertisement 'I suppose this reflects the fact that the game hasn't always been played in whites and the Laws in the modern era do not distinguish between limited overs and first-class cricket. They're meant to be applicable at every level, even those where players can't necessarily be expected to have access to proper kit.' The good doctor, WG Grace, offered his own thoughts on how a cricketer should be attired in a book published in 1890 about cricket called, obliquely, 'Cricket'. Grace offers such sartorial notes as pointing out that 'braces are not worn when playing cricket', that 'nothing can look much worse in the cricket field than to see fieldsmen with their hands in their pockets' and that a jacket 'can be used when fielding, but certainly not when batting or bowling'. Take note. But on the matter of clothing colours, he wrote: 'It was not an unusual sight 10 or 20 years ago to find an XI or county 22 dressed in all the colours of the rainbow. White is now usually worn, and it certainly looks better and cooler than any other colour.' There, again, we have the point about it being a cooling colour. But is the theory sound? You can't necessarily blame the Victorians for not being fully across modern science, but the theory that white is better to wear in the heat is… a subject of debate, at least. While it's true that dark colours absorb heat, that's as much a positive as a negative. They do absorb the light from the sun, but also absorb and take away heat from our bodies, thus cooling us down. So would black have been a better bet? Or at least, equally as good? A study conducted in 1980 by academics from Tel Aviv University, who had observed members of Bedouin tribes wearing both white and black robes in the desert heat, suggested there was essentially no difference between the two in terms of keeping people cool. So if the Victorians did have access to modern science, and temperature was the primary motivator for their sartorial decisions, they might just as easily have chosen something much moodier. Still, white was the choice, and remained so in all forms of cricket until the late 1970s and the advent of World Series Cricket (WSC) in Australia. The great disruptive force in cricket's 20th century, WSC began as a power struggle between Kerry Packer's Channel 9 and the Australian Cricket Board over TV rights. When Packer didn't get them, he recruited the game's biggest names on much healthier wages — Test cricketers to that point having been paid a relative pittance in comparison to the money being made by the authorities — to play in his own series of games. Advertisement But while the start of WSC might have been about economics, it did feature several innovations that have since become entirely normal parts of the game, one of which was a move away from all-white clothing, which, like the introduction of whites in the first place, was born of necessity. Perhaps WSC's most successful innovation was day-night cricket, utilising the floodlights at VFL Park (an Australian rules football stadium that they were forced to use after being banned from all the major cricket venues in the country) to play at times more attractive to the paying public. The problem was that a red ball would not have been practical to use as it would be hard to see against the night sky. So for these games, they used white balls, initially with traditional white clothing, but after a while, it became clear that some contrast was required there, too. So in the second year of WSC, coloured kit was introduced, the Australian team decked out in a striking yellow/gold, the 'Rest of the World' team in blue, while the West Indies wore a sort of salmon-pink. This was regarded as a gimmick by many, not least by some West Indian players whose masculinity was challenged by their allocated colours, and for years afterwards, you would hear assorted bores refer to 'pyjama' cricket. But the gimmicks stuck, and those involved can legitimately claim to have been part of a revolution. 'What had gone before had all been so conservative,' said Tony Greig, a former England captain and one of the key recruits to WSC, in a documentary marking its 20th anniversary in 1997. 'We did bring it (cricket) to life: we turned on the lights, introduced the coloured clothing… they (WSC's critics) bagged us, they didn't understand what we were doing.' Still, the outrage did not extend to all the expected sources. Sir Donald Bradman, whose attitude to most things would generously be described as 'conservative', was prompted to comment on the coloured clothing by the Australian Cricket Board chairman Bob Parish. He replied, as recounted in Gideon Haigh's book about WSC, 'The Cricket War': 'Why should I? The Pinks played the Blues in Sydney in 1822. Coloured clothing means nothing.' Advertisement He wasn't quite right because coloured clothing is now used in all forms of limited-overs/white-ball cricket, but it took a while to catch on and properly spread. It wasn't until 1992 that it was used at the World Cup, and England were still playing one-day internationals in whites as late as 1997. Over the years, additions have been made — manufacturers' badges, sponsors' logos, squad numbers, players' names — to obscure the pure white of the shirts and trousers a little. But even now, England, India, Australia, the West Indies and the rest will turn out in their all-white clothing, just as they did over 150 years ago. Click here to follow cricket on The Athletic and see more stories like this.


National Post
02-07-2025
- Sport
- National Post
DA COSTA: Will India let top Canadian cricketers into country in 2026?
Cricket is nothing short of a religion in India. Millions of fans around the world set their eyes on the lucrative Indian Premier League every year as it draws the best cricketers from around the globe. The 10-team IPL churns out millionaires every year in a country where the population of a billion live and breathe two things — cricket and Bollywood, the country's answer to Hollywood. Article content Article content Next year, though, IPL has to take a back seat to the World Twenty20 Cup that will be hosted by India and Sri Lanka in February and March. After the thrills and spills of this 20-team tournament that will also include Canada, the passionate fans will turn their attention from rooting for their country to cheering their provincial or city clubs. Article content With its growing power on the international sporting scene, especially cricket, it appears India calls all the shots. Article content One country that has felt the full brunt of India's clout has been Pakistan. Pakistani players featured in the IPL's inaugural season in 2008 and then later that year 10 insurgents from Pakistan stormed Mumbai and some 166 people lost their lives. Since then, Pakistanis have been blackballed by the IPL and the two national teams have not played a bilateral Test series. The only time they face each other is in International Cricket Council-organized tournaments such as the World Cups. Article content Article content Unfortunately, some of the countries competing in next year's World T20 Cup will find themselves targeted if they have any ties with Pakistan. Two of Canada's star players — all-rounder Saad Bin Zafar and fast bowler Kaleem Sana, both born in Pakistan — are expected to make their mark in the tournament in 2026 — that's if the Indian authorities allow them into the country. Article content Article content Making life difficult for Pakistani-born players isn't something new. Article content In 2010, I brought it to the attention of then Canadian immigration minister Jason Kenney that one of our top all-rounders Rizwan Cheema had not been granted a visa to play in the World Cup (50 overs) hosted by India. Kenney used his influence to get India to reverse its stand on Cheema. Article content Others who have had to clear hurdles before being granted visas included England's Saqib Mahmood, and in 2024 Test spinner Shoaib Bashir. The British government then intervened, but because of the red tape the spinner missed the first Test. 'We absolutely expect India to treat British citizens fairly at all times in its visa process,' said a British government communique. The other top-rated player who had a similar experience was Australia opening batsman Usman Khawaja, also because of his Pakistani heritage. Article content Bin Zafar and Sana were in brilliant form with the ball in piloting Canada to the World Cup finals in the sub-continent after also impressing during Canada's first appearance in this version of the competition in the U.S. and the Caribbean in 2024 where Zafar earned the honour of captaining Canada. Sana is an experienced player, having played top-notch club cricket for Pakistan Customs and also representing Pakistan in the Under-19 World Cup.


Times
23-06-2025
- Sport
- Times
England need some of KL Rahul's measured majesty amid mayhem in run chase
I t is difficult to explain the feeling and the emotions. Batting for half an hour at the end of the day, as England's openers were required to do here, is an exercise mainly reserved only for the professional arm of the game, simply because multi-day matches are so rare outside of it. But you can be sure that the final session of the day, even before they did eventually bat, will have been a difficult one for Zak Crawley and Ben Duckett. There is so much that is unknown, so much that points to danger and discomfort, especially as the quite brilliant Jasprit Bumrah was going to be pawing the turf at the end of his mark. Would there be a declaration? Would India be bowled out? Might they even try to bat all day, as seemed to be the plan at one stage when they were meandering along with no obvious purpose? So many thoughts, so many possibilities and so many nerves.


The Guardian
23-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
KL Rahul, the anti-Pant, torments England with precision of a maths nerd
Just 10 balls had been delivered on this fourth day, England had started brightly and had just been buoyed by the wicket of India's captain. For the batters a time perhaps for a little caution. At which point the freshly arrived Rishabh Pant faced his second delivery, bowled by Chris Woakes, hared down the pitch and swung his bat like a particularly clueless novice golfer, the ball spinning off the outside edge and flying over the slips and away for four. From the crowd the reflexive reaction was laughter, not inappropriately given this was the kind of behaviour associated normally less with people wearing cricket whites and more with those sporting outsize shoes, a red nose and plenty of face paint. There were plenty more ludicrous moments on Pant's way to a second century of the game, an innings in which the only temptation he did not give in to was the one to perform celebratory acrobatics on reaching triple figures. But if his would have been the name on supporters' lips as they headed out of the gates at the close, the innings put together by the man at the other end was, in an infinitely less showy way, more interesting still – not just because of its quality but because of its contrast, KL Rahul cast perfectly in the role of anti‑Pant. The 33-year-old is by nature particularly well suited to batting with such showmen: there is no need to take any risks when the man at the other end is taking enough for two, and no reason for flamboyance when your partner is so prone to a dance and a swing. He managed to contrast not just with his teammate but even with himself, looking like a rock star, long hair spilling out of his helmet and over his collar, while playing like a maths nerd, all precise angles and economy of force; combining gloriously streamlined, economical movement with what sometimes appears an asinine stubbornness when it comes to budging the scoreboard. This can been seen as a failing, and he has a reputation for losing his way during innings, going through prolonged funks during which the possibility of run-scoring becomes little more than notional. Famously, talking about Twenty20 games, he once insisted that 'strike rates are very, very overrated' – which, given that it is a format in which success is predicated entirely on fast scoring, raised a few hackles (he has, to be fair, also scored the joint second-fastest 50 in Indian Premier League history). Kevin Pietersen once compared the spectator experience when Rahul is at the crease to watching paint dry. 'For me,' Rahul said in that discussion of strike rates, 'it's only about how I can win games for my team.' Here he played from the start as if he knew precisely which path would guide his team towards victory, and he might just have judged it perfectly. For the first hour of this fourth day it was also a path he negotiated very carefully. England sustained their bright start for the full hour, spirits replenished overnight, game in the balance, energy in the field, Brydon Carse straddling it with an outstanding spell. He, and later Ben Stokes, repeatedly located a spot, conveniently positioned if bowling over the wicket from the Kirkstall Lane end towards a right-hander, off which the ball could be relied upon to bounce unreliably, which the left-handed Pant was never bothered by but which allowed Rahul to demonstrate the lightning speed of his reactions. Those same reflexes also allowed him, when the ball behaved less wildly, to appear completely unhurried in his strokeplay. Rahul faced 43 balls in that hour, scoring just seven, before the smoothest of accelerations: 18 off 38 in the second hour of the day, 28 off 45 in the third, 20 off 25 in the fourth (though of course run rates are very, very overrated). Sign up to The Spin Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers' thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week's action after newsletter promotion There were inevitable, and very occasional, imperfections, and three times he edged the ball in inconvenient directions: on 58, off Josh Tongue, high to Harry Brook at gully – who got two palms on it but could not hold on – on 71, off Stokes, into a particularly sensitive area of his own body, and then that final attempt to cut Carse that sent the ball into his own stumps, by which time he had scored 137 and slowly, stylishly shunted the match in his team's favour. And along the way such handsome highlights: leaning back to dab Tongue wide of slip, waiting to the last possible moment to cut Carse with a surgeon's precision into the gap between gully and backward point, or pulling the same bowler, again waiting, late enough that the few remaining sceptics suggested it was more accident than design, to open up the perfect angle. He became just the sixth Indian to score three centuries in this country, having spent the crucial part of his innings in partnership with the fifth. Turns out there are similarities between him and Pant after all.
Yahoo
22-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Former England fast bowler David Lawrence dead at 61
England cricketer Dave 'Syd' Lawrence, who has died aged 61, is honoured at Headingley on Sunday (Darren Staples) David 'Syd' Lawrence, the first British-born black cricketer to play for England, has died at the age of 61, it was announced Sunday. Nearly a year ago it was revealed that Gloucestershire fast bowler Lawrence, who took 18 wickets in five Tests between 1988 and 1992, had been diagnosed with motor neurone disease, an incurable illness, which progressively damages parts of the nervous system. Advertisement A statement from Lawrence's family given to Britain's PA news agency said: "It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Dave Lawrence MBE following his brave battle with motor neurone disease." Lawrence bagged a five-wicket haul against the West Indies in 1991 to help England seal a series-levelling win at the Oval, with Desmond Haynes and Vivian Richards among the batsmen he dismissed. But his career all but ended the following year with a sickening injury when he shattered his kneecap running into bowl during a Test against New Zealand in Wellington. That was the end of his time with England, although he made a brief comeback for Bristol-based Gloucestershire, playing four four-first class games in 1997 before retiring for good after taking 625 wickets for the county. Advertisement He later became president of Gloucestershire, with his old county saying in a social media post Sunday that they were "devastated" to learn of Lawrence's death. Following his MND diagnosis, there were emotional scenes when Gloucestershire won the T20 Blast final at Edgbaston last year, with captain James Bracey presenting the trophy to Lawrence. His MND diagnosis also hastened Lawrence's autobiography amid fears he would lose the ability to speak. Titled 'In Syd's Voice', and written with the help of cricket journalist Dean Wilson, the book was published this month. England and Wales Cricket Board chairman Richard Thompson hailed Lawrence as a "true trailblazer" who became a "powerful voice for inclusion and representation in our sport". Advertisement There was a minute's applause in honour of Lawrence before the start of the third day's play in the first Test between England and India at Headingley on Sunday, with players and officials also wearing black armbands as a mark of respect. jdg/nr