Cricket: The birth of the beige

John Wright in action in the beige uniform. Photo / Getty Images

The beige uniform caused quite a stir when first foisted on a bemused New Zealand team writes Nick Edlin.

Before they became the Black Caps, and even before the were the early-1990s Young Guns, the New Zealand cricket team was best known for three things - Richard Hadlee, Martin Crowe, and that beige uniform.

The latter, which came into being during New Zealand's 1980-81 tour of Australia, has long been ditched as the national strip. But in recent years it has undergone a revival, becoming a must-have item of retro-chic couture for a certain brand of cricket tragic.

The affection for the uniform is ironic given that it was foisted on the team by Australian officials indifferent to New Zealand's sporting identity.

It was met with bewilderment by some of the players when it was handed out prior to the one-day international match against Australia at the Adelaide Oval in November, 1980 - the first game in a three-team tournament also involving India.

The match was also the first time New Zealand played in coloured clothing, a then-radical innovation that had survived the demise of Kerry Packer's iconoclastic World Series Cricket.

"We weren't happy about the colour," says Ewen Chatfield, whose five-wicket haul in the match helped New Zealand to a dramatic and surprising victory. "I don't think New Zealand Cricket had any choice. How they came to pick beige, I don't know."

Fellow fast bowler Gary Troup, who didn't play in that first game but featured in other matches throughout the series, was also nonplussed.

"We were saying it didn't really fit anything we've ever done in New Zealand, so it had no relevance to us as players. We resented it slightly because we seemed to be the odd one out. Everybody else had colours that related to their country."

Lance Cairns in action in the beige uniform. Photo / Getty Images

Opening batsman Bruce Edgar, however, took a different view of the uniform's unfortunate hue.

"I didn't really care," he says. "I think we all wore ugly uniforms, it was as simple as that. It was really [a question of] who had the ugliest. I suppose it was Australia, and we came a close second with India."

The cut of the new uniforms veered away from the traditional loose fitting flannel to something a bit tighter, something a bit more '70s zeitgeist.

"Putting it on, it was more about fashion than cricket," laughs Troup. "It was the sort of thing you'd wear to the disco."

The beige-and-brown might not have made it past many discothèque bouncers, but it was right at home at the circus, which was what the early 'pyjama cricket' came to be known as.

Edgar says walking out into the middle in coloured clothing for the first time was "like an outer-body experience", and contributed to the surreal feeling brought on by the brave new world of ODI cricket.

"It was a great occasion for us, the whole razzamatazz," says Edgar of the Australian tournament. "They called it a circus and it felt like a circus because we did so much travelling.

"Australia's not a small country and we just seemed to be on an endless number of plane flights from Sydney to Melbourne to Adelaide, up to Brisbane, across to Perth, back to Melbourne. It was a travelling roadshow."

New Zealand performed well in the tournament, knocking out India to make the finals against Australia. It was during the finals that Australian captain Greg Chappell instructed his brother Trevor to bowl the infamous underarm delivery at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

The incident fuelled outrage on both sides of the Tasman and even divided the Australian dressing room.

"The senior Australian players didn't like it," says Chatfield. "Rodney Marsh and Dennis Lillee came into the dressing room and apologised for what had gone on."

New Zealand's Prime Minister at the time, Robert Muldoon, famously found a link between Chappell's delivery and the uniform he was wearing, saying he "thought it was appropriate the Australian team was dressed in yellow".

But Edgar has come to see the incident as part of the rich tapestry of those early pioneering days. It was one of several indelible moments, along with Lance Cairns' six sixes at the MCG in 1983, and John Bracewell's one-armed salute to the WACA crowd a few years later, that have come to make the beige uniform an iconic emblem of Kiwi sport.

A young Ian Smith in beige at Eden Park in 1984. Photo / Getty Images

"In a sense it may have thrown the beige-and-brown to a new level," says Edgar. "Greg [Chappell] made a mistake, but equally he did [us] a huge favour. He's a top bloke. Often when I see him I thank him for what he did. He created so much interest in the game."

Chatfield says New Zealand's participation in the Australian tri-series was a game-changer for the sport.

"That tour, I believe, changed the psyche of cricket in New Zealand. We had played very little one-day cricket at home, and people seemed to get hooked on it by watching it on the tele with the coloured clothing and the white ball."

That interest was evident a few weeks later when the side hosted India at Eden Park. It was the first time colours had been worn in New Zealand, and a big crowd of over 25,000 turned out to see the action.

While the punters may have loved it, the establishment was a bit slower catching on. Curiously, and perhaps tellingly, the NZPA report for the Adelaide game made no mention of the new uniforms. And when the colours were rolled out at home, the reception from some parts was decidedly frosty.

On the day of the India match at Eden Park, Herald cricket writer DJ Cameron summed up the prevailing mood.

"It has now been decided that the Indian cricketers will wear coloured clothing when they open their New Zealand tour with a one-day game against New Zealand at Eden Park this afternoon," he wrote.

"I had rather hoped the Indians would play in white - and take it as a signal that whatever has gone before in Australia these last three months the Indians will today be embarking on a new and very likely distinctive tour."

Cameron's words now appear King Canute-like - a futile attempt to push back the tide. And the new wave coming in brought with it a sea change in the way fans saw the gentleman's game. Edgar says the coloured clothing was responsible for unearthing more chest-thumping passion from crowds.

"With white [uniforms], everyone is in white," he says. "But with coloured gear, you could identify tribally much more strongly and say, 'that's my mob, that's their mob - let's get into them'."

Glenn Turner paired his beige uniform with a blue helmet. Photo / Getty Images

Cameron's hopes for a more seemly state of affairs were dashed in that first coloured-clothing match at Eden Park. New Zealand won the game convincingly, with Edgar left stranded on 99 not out in the first innings.

But the scoreline seems incidental compared to the unruly state of affairs on the bleachers. A Herald report, which noted that 35 arrests were made during the game, says it all: "Inspector John Palmer said the behavior in the number six open stand area was 'appalling'. He said there were many outbreaks of brawling, obscene language and can throwing'."

A year later, Australia toured New Zealand, the first time the sides had met since the 'underarm' series. A whopping 42,000 people turned up for the first ODI at Eden Park. The beige-and-browns won the match by 46 runs, but again, the result seems to matter less than the folklore the game created.

Australian captain Greg Chappell scored a century in a losing effort and even won the man-of-the-match award, but that did little to help him curry favour with the local fans.

"Chappell came out to boos," says Troup, who picked up four wickets in the match. "I was fielding on the boundary. As he came out to the wicket, a guy bowled a lawn bowl out. [He] literally came out and stood beside me and just bowled this lawn bowl out.

"Jerry Coney got it in the middle of the wicket and bowled it back," he laughs. "[He] did a good job because it came straight back to me."

With the changes cricket has undergone in recent years, including the advent of Twenty20 and the mega-rich professional leagues it has spawned, the hype that surrounded coloured uniforms now seems almost quaint. But Edgar is quick to point out just how much of a jolt it was at the time, particularly for fans.

"You ... [went] to a traditional cricket ground and all of a sudden there was a bunch of people there in strange clothing. Like a bunch of aliens had arrived."