Why I ask, as someone just a bit smitten by fashion and its many

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possibilities, is a game that half the world watches (not the US I agree, but we choose to ignore that fact as well as that country’s dementia over baseball) and obsesses over, played in such unfashionably slovenly clothes?

Do the pundits of cricket think that the game is the thing, and who cares what the players look like; everyone is watching the ball as it flies high, or slips, or cracks against the wicket anyway.

Or is it that, busy and engaged as they are with the thundering calendar of unending matches of every type, and with traipsing acr­oss the globe mixing and matching teams and players, there is little time to think of mundanities like uniforms?

Whatever the reason, the result is odious.

I mean, if one has to watch the World Cup, might as well watch it with some style showing not just in the way Sachin swings his bat, but also in the way the players are turned out.

Is Wimbledon the less competitive because the players dress stylishly?

Worth mulling over a bit… what?

Actually, to be fair, the early men on the field, the conventional Test Match players who first started the game that has mutated into so many versions, did not look too bad. There is something natty about an all white uniform, it is literally Cool.

Even then, the clothes were cut with some attention to fit and silhouette. I am sure the men thus fitted were aware that they would be the cynosure of countless pairs of eyes, and wanted to look their best, despite the fact that they would spend the better part of smeltingly hot days out in the sun, for as long as it took for the match to reach a decisive ending.

But over the years, the men in white are seen more and more rarely. And even the white has found some disturbing intrusions of colour and typefaces that purists like me find annoying. But more dismaying is that the men in white have largely been replaced by men in blue… and things have deteriorated sadly indeed.

Why, when one sport can benefit so much by being a feast to the eyes in more ways than one, should another not be similarly inspired? Instead over the years, even as fashion took centrestage in tennis, it has slunk away right out of the field in cricket.

In tennis, Wimbledon takes the honours for setting the style metre soaring even as early as the 1800s. Women abandoned the obligatory flannels and bustles and petticoats topped by corsets and blouses trimmed with fur for… first calf length skirts, then rolled up sleeves and loose shirts. But it was the year 1949 that set the court on fire. When the by now legendary Gertrude Agusta Moran, a Californian, was dressed by a designer in a white satin trimmed regulation dress to enhance her ‘shimmering’ personality, and offered, even as she ran to return a particularly tough shot, an enticing glimpse of lace lined panties.

Of course the images of the more recent Wimbledon players, including the Williams sisters have remained so sharply in public memory that Wimbledon has become a synonym for a stylish game played by stylishly dressed women. And the men are not too far behind either.

Even volleyball made its debut in fashion by fitting the women into snugger shorts, and thanks to FIFA, women’s football is not far behind.

Perhaps the American influence is what the very propah game of cricket needs.

The women’s cricket teams seem a bit more sensitive in their approach to uniforms, and though the grace went out of women’s cricket when the British and Australian teams abandoned their skirts (which anyway looked terrible with stuffy leg pads under them) for trousers, the women’s uniforms are at least better structured. And sometimes the women, being women, let designers dress them up. The formal wardrobe of smart, softly cut navy suits, piped in white and cut out of wool crepe and cotton designed by Paul Costelloe made headlines!

But who watches women’s cricket anyway! Chauvinsim shows up in strange ways, and cricket is one prominent example.

So, to get back to the men in blue, who will be in evidence over the coming World Cup series. Nike might be great shoemakers, but they could not Just Do It right for the ODI uniforms… eco-friendly or not, they made our boys look shapeless, sweaty, more like ageing papas walking in the park than devil daring men on the crease.

The only time cricketers look sharp are when they face cameras, or walk up to cut a ribbon at some do, or perhaps pose for a group photo. Then the blazers are out and the spit and polish helps create some style.

Is there a designer who can make them look good on the field too?