Cricket Jumpers

I spent the day at Lords yesterday, the home of cricket, watching the second day of the England vs India Test Match. It was very hot! Luckily we were high up and our seats were in shade until around 4pm, at which point I gave up and retreated to the back of the stand where there was a breeze and some benches. It was too hot to even knit, and for me that is really saying something. After I had chatted with everyone prepared to have a conversation, I started giving some thought to this week’s blog and, as I was at Lords, my mind wandered to cricket jumpers. Obviously no one was wearing any such thing yesterday (although I did see some people in shirts and ties), and I wondered whether they are still a thing, or whether they are now considered too old fashioned. My husband, on being applied to as the local expert (he plays village cricket), said that some people do still wear them, but (his words) in cheap, nasty fabrics. So I turned to my phone and did a bit of research on the subject.

Coincidentally, we had had a big conversation the day before on the subject of the importance of clothing and how clothes are an indicator of wealth and status. It seems that cricket jumpers, also known as tennis or golf jumpers, fall into this category. Firstly, however, I should describe a cricket jumper in case you have never seen one. They are usually knitted in a cable knit pattern in a cream or white fibre (usually cotton but sometimes wool) and will have a V neck with bands of colours, perhaps relevant to the club to which the wearer belongs. They may have sleeves or be sleeveless.

It is worth noting that before the late Victorian period, sporting clothes to be worn when doing sports, did not exist. The Ancient Greeks, for example, did all their sports in the nude. In Britain, if people were at leisure, they might remove their jackets, loosen their ties, roll up their sleeves. It was only in the 1880s, in the United Kingdom, that, along with the establishment of sports clubs and the codification of rules, specific clothing came into being. My favourite example is that of the female Victorian cyclists who wore what was called ‘rational dress’, that is bloomers, in order to be able sit astride a bicycle. In the 1880’s, women’s tennis dresses still involved corsets and long skirts, and it was at that time that the tradition of ‘tennis whites’ and ‘cricket creams’ came in. The all white requirement was initially practical as white shows sweat marks less, but it was not long before the whites became synonymous with sporting elegance.

Even though jumpers were worn in sports, they were predominantly worn by blue collar working class men, who appreciated the warmth and flexibility. By the 1920’s tennis players such as Suzanne Lenglen who pioneered shorter skirts in womens tennis, had begun to set fashion in sporting dress, with their design ideas being taken up by big fashion houses such as Chanel. It seems unlikely, though, that tennis or cricket jumpers were invented to be worn while playing. Some people claim that the heavy cable knit sweaters were introduced to be worn on the ski slopes, and this is perfectly possible if the v necked jumpers were going to be worn over polo necks. Another theory is that the sweater was popularised on the golf links, and indeed by the 1920s the v necked sweater was by far the most popular style worn by golfers. The Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) was a male fashion leader of his day and apparently he preferred a sleeveless, v necked sweater when playing golf, although the only images I could find showed him wearing a fair isle jumper. This kind of pullover was adopted by golfers in the UK and the US and they are still worn today.

The term ‘cricket jumper’ or ‘cricket sweater’ seems to be interchangeable with ‘tennis jumper’ and the style rapidly became very popular, often not just with players who wore them when warming up, but with spectators who wore them instead of jackets, often draped over their shoulders. They became associated with a particular kind of glamour. I found an amazing photo of Cary Grant in the 1950s wearing one. These days, Ralph Lauren creates a new tennis sweater design every year in time for Wimbledon. Inevitably, I suppose, a good quality cricket jumper now costs quite a lot of money and is probably more of a fashion statement than a sporting necessity.

My husband has so far been very resistant to my offers to knit him a cricket jumper. I think he thinks people will laugh at him. However, yesterday, perhaps because he was feeling well disposed towards me for having accompanied him to swelter at Lords, he agreed that he might contemplate a slipover. I think I will put the West Ham colours on the neck, coincidentally the same colours as his cricket club. So that is another planned project to add the pile. Who knows, perhaps I might even do it one day!