Five years of The Hundred and cricket's identity experiment still has no answer

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The Hundred has always been an experiment in manufactured identity – you can’t hurry history, but perhaps you can fake it

The Lucknow Super Giants kit says a lot about their team. Specifically, it draws from the “cultural fabric” of the city and the surrounding state of Uttar Pradesh, “where colour, craft and ritual shape everyday life”. According to the team website, the shirt-and-trousers combo signals “ambition grounded in responsibility to the city it represents”, and reflects “resilience under pressure, steady progress and the confidence that comes from building the right way”. It’s quite an achievement to weave that much subtext into a standard pattern of red-and-blue stripes.

Justin Langer, who coached the team through this season’s Indian Premier League, will have no doubt conveyed some of this messaging to the Manchester Super Giants, as the men’s squad pulled on the exact same colours (including the elephant on the club crest) before their Hundred debut at Lord’s. Or perhaps Aiden Markram – captain, now, of all three team Super Giant franchises – tugged at his shirt in his pre-match talk and evoked its reinterpreted, Mancunian significance. As per a slightly disastrous social media launch in June, the colours are now said to represent the perfect summertime union of the northern city’s warring footballing tribes.

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