The Beige Brigade is the name of
New Zealand Cricket
New Zealand Cricket, formerly the New Zealand Cricket Council, is the governing body for professional cricket in New Zealand. Cricket is the most popular and highest profile summer sport in New Zealand.
New Zealand Cricket operates the New ...
supporters who identify themselves by wearing beige colors. A version of this beige uniform was worn by the New Zealand limited overs
cricket
Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...
team during the early 1980s (in contrast to the more familiar black, which is worn by almost all New Zealand sports teams, including the current cricket team).
History
The Beige Brigade began in 1999 as a group of dedicated New Zealand cricket fans began wearing home sewn beige uniforms to New Zealand matches.
These home-made kits echoed the much-maligned official beige team uniform of the 1980s. The uniform become popular as a gesture of solidarity and support for the New Zealand cricket team of the eighties. Today, the Beige Brigade sells the uniforms to the public together with a "moral contract", explaining the supporter's code of conduct.
Such was the impact on the sporting culture of New Zealand, that in 2019 the
NZC agreed to have the
Black Caps wear a version of the beige uniform for the inaugural
Twenty20
Twenty20 (abbreviated T20) is a shortened format of cricket. At the professional level, it was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 for the county cricket, inter-county competition. In a Twenty20 game, the two t ...
international between New Zealand and
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
.
Controversy arose later when CEO
Martin Snedden told the Brigade's top brass that "NZ Cricket had invested heavily in the black branding for the Black Caps and that a return to beige was completely out of the question."
The decision to wear the beige uniforms did not go down well with the members of the Beige Brigade, believing that the decision making omitted members of the Brigade, despite the work done by supporters designing, funding the manufacture of and popularizing the clothing.
The Beige Brigade organizes tours to selected major sporting events as well. The only other overseas
Black Caps supporters club is the England-based
London New Zealand Cricket Club, notable for their striped blazers that often appear on the camera at
Lord's
Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket List of Test cricket grounds, venue in St John's Wood, Westminster. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex C ...
.
Brigadiers are now commonly seen sporting very short shorts known as "
Stubbies" and other items such as
sweat bands, fluorescent
zinc sunblock, and
aviator sunglasses
Aviator sunglasses are a style of sunglasses that was developed by a group of American firms. The original Bausch & Lomb design is now commercially marketed as Ray-Ban Aviators, although other manufacturers also produce aviator-style sunglasses. ...
that were once staples of New Zealand summer menswear. During
2016 ICC World T20, the new kits also featured the retro beige color, which was the color that was worn when Twenty20 cricket was first introduced.
See also
London New Zealand Cricket Club
References
External links
*
Stubbies{dead link, date=January 2018 , bot=InternetArchiveBot , fix-attempted=yes
Inaugural Twenty20 Match(BBC)
Cricket culture
Sports organisations of New Zealand
Sports spectators
1999 establishments in New Zealand