In and out of fashion

Touring in foreign countries where security limits your mobility to hotel premises pushes the thresholds of boredom. Perhaps in homage to New Zealand stars of yesteryear, such as Richard Hadlee and Jeremy Coney, or perhaps because the enchantment of being cooped up in their hotel rooms with PSPs has worn off, Martin Guptill and Jesse Ryder have decided to grow moustaches.

Ryder’s has been slowly gaining growth over the last week or so but Guptill’s is a newer endeavour. The two players were seen showing off their best efforts at the first Twenty20 international.

It reminded me of one of the episodes in Family Guy, where Peter Griffin, the lead character, decides to grow a moustache. I won’t say more …

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The ‘tache fad hasn’t caught on elsewhere in the team, but it does seem like a few others are on a mission to put baseball caps back on the fashion radar.

Waiting for a friend in the lobby of the hotel Cinnamon Grand, I cannot but help notice the various designs of baseball caps being modeled by the players. I chuckle, remembering a college friend once telling me that baseball caps should be banned as a fashion statement.

Each cap on view is a prominent American baseball or basketball team. Nothing to do with cricket, international, domestic or franchise.

Jacob Oram is wearing a blue and white Phillies cap. Shane Bond has on a green and white Boston Celtics cap. Kyle Mills and Daryl Tuffey walk past together in Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees caps. You won’t see that outside Fenway or Yankee Stadium, I’ll tell you. A funky designer white baseball cap sits awkwardly perched atop Martin Guptill’s crop of red hair. Apart from Guptill’s, each of the caps look like they’ve been properly broke in – a very crucial part of looking cool in a baseball cap, as a cousin told me when I was given my first Celtics cap as a child.

A member of New Zealand’s support staff looks out of place with a designer beret on his head. Spike Lee and Steven Spielberg, who pioneered a shift from berets to baseball caps in the 1980s, would have muttered about how passé he was.

Somehow I don’t think this cap fascination is going to catch on with the Sri Lankan cricketers, most of who, when they’re not playing or practicing, slick and gel their hair to perfection.