WITH MENSWEAR dominated by limited-edition, limited-style hoodies and sweatpants, you might find the crisp cricket look—all cable-knit sweaters and immaculate trousers—disarmingly classic. But that doesn’t mean that the attire of the popular-everywhere-except-America sport is fusty. When Tyler, the Creator, wore a cricket sweater with a blazer, cropped trousers and chunky loafers in Los Angeles last year, the rapper came across, appealingly, as a kooky art-school kid trapped at the University of Oxford.
Cricket is only the latest preppy sport to get the fashion treatment; Ralph Lauren, after all, built an empire on polo and rugby style. The sport, regarded by most Americans as an eccentric cousin of baseball, has a distinctive uniform that has remained largely consistent since the sport’s modernization in the late 18th century: straight-leg trousers, V-neck sweaters featuring stripes—the overall palette often white, though sometimes brighter. (These pieces have been updated with tech-y fabrics for competitive play.) The sport is popular across England as well as former British colonies India, Australia and the West Indies.
But cricket’s no longer just for the stadium towns of Kolkata, India, and Kennington, England. The cricket sweater is increasingly infiltrating American menswear circles, with New York labels Thom Browne and Rowing Blazers as well as Ralph Lauren offering versions this season. The bright, monochromatic styles of some cricket team uniforms (burgundy in the West Indies, an electric sky-blue in India) feel connected to the committedly colorful suits from Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton and Kim Jones at Dior Homme.
Cricket clothing is uniquely well-suited to be worn out and about. “The marriage of function and style has always been heavily present in cricket,” said Daniel Melamud, the New York-based author of the new book, “This is Cricket: In the Spirit of the Game,” and a lifelong devotee of the sport. The British expat describes men sporting a cricket sweater on the field and then to postgame drinks at a pub in London.
He observed that the traditional blazers and cozy knitwear of cricket have long evoked genteel daywear. Cricket—unlike sweatier sports such as basketball—involves a lot of downtime, so wearing a blazer is not quite as absurd as it sounds. A typical game of cricket can last five or six hours a day, for three days straight. As Mr. Melamud admitted, “You spend so much time standing around during the game.”
