<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he Lucknow Super Giants kit says a lot about their team. Specifically, it draws from the \u201ccultural fabric\u201d of the city and the surrounding state of Uttar Pradesh, \u201cwhere colour, craft and ritual shape everyday life\u201d. According to the team website, the shirt-and-trousers combo signals \u201cambition grounded in responsibility to the city it represents\u201d, and reflects \u201cresilience under pressure, steady progress and the confidence that comes from building the right way\u201d. It\u2019s quite an achievement to weave that much subtext into a standard pattern of red-and-blue stripes.<\/p>\n Justin Langer, who coached the team through this season\u2019s Indian Premier League, will have no doubt conveyed some of this messaging to the Manchester Super Giants, as the men\u2019s squad pulled on the exact same colours (including the elephant on the club crest) before their Hundred debut at Lord\u2019s. Or perhaps Aiden Markram \u2013 captain, now, of all three team Super Giant franchises \u2013 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\u2019s warring footballing tribes.<\/p>\n Either way, that moisture-wicking premium-performance fabric is doing a lot of heavy lifting in the heritage department. But then, the Hundred has always been an experiment in manufactured identity. Five years ago, it detonated itself across August in a visceral explosion of clashing colour; a tournament backdrop of urgent pink-and-green strobing with the neon yellows, oranges and reds of its team designs. Back then, the purpose of this palette was anything but subtext. This was CRICKET IN CAPS LOCK, dazzling fluorescence to captivate the sport\u2019s newborns, radioactive signals for a hyperactive audience.<\/p>\n As for history or past heroes, the Hundred had none. That absence is presumably part of the appeal for many of this year\u2019s incoming investors \u2013 particularly IPL owners, who can overwrite their own backstory on to their purchased product. In that respect you have to feel sorry for the erstwhile Oval Invincibles, who had done such a good job of living up to their name<\/a> in their short lifespan; their new title, courtesy of their partnership with Mumbai Indians, is now in continual dispute among commentary teams. Is it \u201cMy\u201d London \u2013 as in not yours \u2013 or is it \u201cM.I. London\u201d, which makes it sound like a hyperlocal branch of the intelligence service, based just down the road from the Oval?<\/p>\n Perhaps this continued randomly generated feel to the teams is why the Hundred\u2019s first week in its new privatised incarnation hasn\u2019t yet felt radically different from what came before. The quality of the action has felt familiar, with a couple of disappointingly one-sided affairs, and a couple of properly exciting finishes. Some of the intrigue is sharpened by the fact that, since the move from draft to auction, we\u2019re still trying to remember who plays for whom. When Joe Root walked out in red on Wednesday night, it took a beat to recall whether he was officially Welsh or Southern this year; it had been hard enough imagining the Yorkshiremanhim as Trentish.<\/p>\n