THE COSTUME OF THE CRICKETER

Abstract

DO NOT BE A ZEBRA OR A SPOTTED LEOPARD IT IS LOW. This is what Mr. Frederick Gale, otherwise known as the Old Buffer, advised cricketers in 1887: they must positively avoid uniforms and loud dress. 'Common sense and good taste are bringing men back to better ways', he said, 'and they begin to find out that the Harlequin shirts and thunder and lightning jackets could only have been invented for the benefit of tailors and haberdashers.' This unkind crack aimed at the foremost wandering clubs, whose members were not only socially elite but also leading cricketers, is a little surprising from an old Wykehamist, who was one of the caste. Unquestionably the Old Buffer was a reactionary! The quartered shirts of the Oxford Harlequins are still a familiar sight on the rugger field, but modern cricketers wear the colours made up into caps and blazers. 'Thunder and lightning' refers to the famous I Zingari, whose colours, black, red and yellow, signifying out of darkness, through fire into light, had once been described caustically as 'the fantastic costume of a Spanish brigand, the most conspicuous part being the scarlet shirt and chapeau, very similar in shape to the common billycock, trimmed with coloured ribbons'. 'White', said Mr. Gale, 'is the colour for the cricket field, so put on your white flannel suit. And you shall have a piec~ of dandyism if you wear a straw hat, and you may wear a broad ribbon, provided it is good ribbon, dark red or purple, for instance, not a sarcenet which runs to all kinds of colours and looks like the stuff they tie cigars up with. And your straw hat must be good and shapely, and not fit your head like a beefsteak pudding.' Finally an association of ideas umelated to costume! a cricketer is advised to eat a mutton chop for breakfast. However old fashioned the Old Buffer might have been, the same could scarcely have been said of the great Dr. W.G. Grace. He was, it i~ true, a self confessed disbeliever in elaborate dress or over-particularity as to the look of his trousers or shirt when you see his portrait in the Pavilion you will, I think, appreciate what he meant. In the first decade or so of his long career (which began in 1864) it had been a common sight to see county elevens dressed in all colours of the rainbow. Now, writing on cricket dress in 1888, he still found it worth while to say, 'white is usually worn, and it certainly looks better and cooler than any other colour'. Grace informed aspiring cricketers that any player worth his salt would impress upon his tailor the momentous importance of comfortably fitting clothes. Shirts must be cut to fit easily at the shoulders and loosely at the neck. Trousers could be made either of white flannel or of a woollen cloth manufactured specially for the purpose and less prone to shrink in the wash a very import-