The Colours of Cricket Trivia Quiz

Answer: White

Lots of good practical reasons for this - it's the easiest background to see a dark ball against, it's a sensible colour to wear in the sun (which is supposed to shine in the summer, when cricket is played!), and most shirts only came in white anyway in the early days of cricket.

Answer: Red

Until recent times, with the introduction of coloured clothing and a white ball in some forms of one day cricket, all cricket balls were red. It's still the case when white clothing is used. I've never heard of a black cricket ball, a green one would be completely impractical against a background of green grass, and though pink sounds like a highly unlikely option, just watch this space - some experimentation has been done with a light pink ball, and it could be introduced to one day cricket at some stage in the future.

Answer: Solid Black

Sir Allen Stanford is a Texan billionaire who moved to the West Indies in the 1990's. He fell in love with cricket, and has ploughed huge amounts of his personal fortune into the development of the game in the Carribean over the past few years. One of the distinctive brand marks of Stanford cricket are the black bats used by all batsmen.

Answer: Craig White

Craig White has been a stalwart of Yorkshire cricket since returning to the UK in 1990, as well as making frequent valuable contributions with both bat and ball during his distinguished international career with England in both the long and short forms of the game.

Answer: Blue

Mainly light blue, though they have sometimes played in dark blue. Often, the orange, white and green of the Indian flag feature somewhere on the kit as well.

Answer: White

In Test cricket, the ball is red, the kit's are white - therefore a white sightscreen gives the batsman the best view of the ball. Any dark colour behind the bowler makes the ball harder to see - as anyone who has batted at cricket without sightscreens, against a dark background, will know only too well!

Answer: The Jade Stadium

Lancaster Park was established in 1880, when the Canterbury Cricket and Athletic Sports company purchased a substantial area of land from the Lancaster Estate in Christchurch. It has been the home to many famous rugby union and cricket occasions over the years, as well as hosting soccer, rugby league, athletics, trotting and pop concerts.

Answer: Baggy Green

Australian cricket authorities first started awarding the distinctively shaped and coloured "baggy green" cap at the turn of the Twentieth Century. It is regarded with great reverence by all Aussie test cricketers, and they will treasure their original cap throughout their test careers - which means that for some of the longer serving players, their caps can become quite battered and faded towards the end of their careers.

Answer: Hollywood CC

C. Aubrey Smith captained the England Cricket team in the 1890's, having enjoyed a lenghty county career with Sussex. He moved to Hollywood in 1929 to teach cricket at UCLA, alongside a young aspiring actor called Boris Karloff. In 1932, Smith formed the Hollywood Cricket Club and over the years they have featured many famous names - when Olivier turned up to make a film, he found a note from Smith in his hotel room requesting his presence at practice nets the following morning, 2 hours before his first call at the movie set.

These days, the club fields three sides, who play in the competitive Southern California Cricket Association competitions.

Answer: Lords, London

Prior to 1787, the aristocrats and noblemen of Southern England would gather to play cricket at the White Conduit Fields in Islington, London (a mile or so from the MCC's current home in St John's Wood). In 1787, they formed themselves into the Marylebone Cricket Club.

After some wandering around the suburbs of North London, they finally settled at some ground around a duck pond slightly to the north of Baker Street - where Lord's Cricket Ground (named after the initial sponsor, Thomas Lord) is still to be found today. If you know nothing about cricket, but are a little intrigued, and find yourself in London with a few hours to spare - go and visit Lord's, and the very friendly custodians there will give you a compelling tour around the old ground - and you'll learn more than enough to score high points on most of the FT cricket quizzes!