Here's why England and West Indies players will wear red caps in third Test of the series

With the series being levelled at 1-1, England and West Indies are set to lock horns in the third and final match of the three-Test series at Old Trafford. Joe Root and his troops, after suffering a defeat in the first Test, retaliated in the second to save the series and register a comprehensive triumph in the second Test.

In the final Test of the series in Manchester from July 24, both England and West Indies will wear red in honour of Sir Andrew Strauss’s late wife Ruth. The players will wear red caps, with logos and splashes of red also appearing on shirts, stumps and boundary hoardings. The Test has also been named The Ruth Strauss Foundation Test.

After his wife Ruth died from a rare form of lung cancer affecting non-smokers in 2018, former England captain Andrew Strauss established a charity to conduct research into this type of the disease and to assist families facing the death of a parent. After Ruth’s diagnosis, Strauss eventually stepped down from his role as England’s director of cricket following a period of compassionate leave to support his wife and their two sons, Sam and Luca.

The former England skipper had flagged off the initiative last year in front of a sell-out 28,500 crowd packed Lord’s for the second Ashes Test. The previous year’s event raised over 550,000 GBP for the Ruth Strauss Foundation and the former England skipper believes that this year’s event will also make a similar impact despite the absence of spectators at Old Trafford.

It’s going to be different this year amid the pandemic: Andrew Strauss

“It goes without saying it’s going to be different this year, the world is in a different place and it’s obviously not going to feel quite the same as it did last year but it will hopefully be just as impactful,” said Strauss as quoted by inews.co.uk. “I personally felt last year that the combination of the Red for Ruth day and some really good, quality cricket at the same time was a really fantastic combination,” he added.

Along with players sporting the red caps, Strauss will also be a part of the commentary team for the Test, promising to give the red suit he sported at Lord’s a year ago another airing. Strauss also said he understood why charities were losing out to virus-related causes amid the pandemic. However, he is optimistic that they can raise a significant amount to give the support that the other people need.

“We’ve had three or four events either cancelled or postponed, most of the events that you do require people to be together in a room and so that’s not possible now and probably won’t be for a while either.

We estimate it’s going to cost about GBP 200 to put someone through the Ruth Strauss Foundation training programme so the more of those GBP 200 we can raise, the more we can help people to give the support that other people will need,” said Strauss, who donned the England jersey in 100 Tests, 127 ODIs and 4 T20Is.