Colour options were given to BCCI and they chose: ICC on Indian team’s orange jersey

After all the speculation, the ‘away’ jersey of the Indian cricket team for the ICC World Cup 2019 was revealed and it has already made the headlines. The new jersey that Virat Kohli’s men will wear in the game against England at Edgbaston on Sunday is orange in colour. India will wear the new colour since their original kit is blue which is a shade similar to that donned by the home team.

As per the ICC’s new rule, the teams have to wear different jerseys based on ‘home’ and ‘away’ colours so that they do not cause confusion in identifying the teams distinctly. Apart from India, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Afghanistan and Bangladesh have been made to pick different coloured kits because of similar shades.

Speculation was rife for a long time as to what colour will the Indian players eventually wear as their ‘away’ matches at the World Cup. The fans even started circulating pictures of imagined kits on the social media till all mystery was cracked on Wednesday. India have four games left in the tournament, including that against England. They will play the West Indies on Thursday; Bangladesh on July 2 and Sri Lanka on July 6.

Colour options were given to BCCI

“Colour options were given to BCCI and they chose the colour combination that looked the best to them. The whole idea is to be different from blue as England also wears the same shade of blue as India,” ICC clarified. “The design (orange) is taken from India’s old T20 jersey which had orange in it. The designers who are sitting in the USA designed this jersey from something that already existed and not something completely new that fans don’t identify with.”

Only England and Pakistan have been allowed to stick to their own colours while Australia, New Zealand and the West Indies have been exempted from having a different kit because of their unique colours — yellow, black and maroon, respectively.

The England-India clash will be a high-voltage one since both sides will be eyeing a win to confirm a place in the semi-finals. The hosts will be particularly desperate to win the game to arrest a mid-tournament slump after they lost consecutive games against Sri Lanka and Australia.

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Meanwhile, India’s orange jersey became a matter of political tussle as some of the anti-BJP parties in the country accused the ruling party to have orchestrated the decision.