There were eleven heads on the field -- each sporting a different form of headgear.
Dinesh Mongia led the team onto the field, very conspicuous in a blue and red Lancashire Twenty-20 cap. Behind him came his team, each as colorful -- off spinner Rajesh Sharma in an all red cap, Amit Uniyal in a blue floppy hat, Yuvraj Singh in the white India cap, and so on.
The whites they wore were equally diverse -- each player wore the flannels provided by the company that employed them, or had contracts with. Yuvraj meanwhile came out in the India team flannels, with the BCCI logo and name of the Indian team sponsors.
It was as if someone had wandered into Shivaji Park, picked 11 out of the hundreds that play there, and brought them to the Wankhede to play.
A team -- especially one participating in the premier domestic league -- has a dress code, an official emblem, a homogenous look. But not this Punjab side.
Punjab Cricket Association president Inderjit Singh Bindra seemed oblivious to what was going on.
"Are they wearing different whites? I don't know. I will have to check with the manager why this is the case," Bindra, who watched all four days of the semi final, said.
A player, who did not want to be named, said they wore gear supplied by their respective companies only because the PCA hadn 't given them enough to last through the season.
Punjab skipper Dinesh Mongia defended his team, and pointed out that the PCA had provided whites made of synthetic material, wholly inappropriate for the Mumbai heat.
"We would've been very uncomfortable in those clothes. So the boys took permission from the coach to play wearing their own flannels. I wore the official one with the PCA logo because I am the captain."
Headgear, he said, hadn't been provided by the PCA, hence the lads all wore their own.
"At the beginning (of the season) we had been wearing the caps given to us last year. But they couldn't last and then there were some debutants this season. They didn't have an official cap."
In contrast, the Mumbai team was in impeccable uniform. You would say, judging by the results, that none of this mattered -- after all, Punjab did win the game, in style, against the defending champions.
Yet, the question begs asking -- why will home associations not take the trouble to kit out their teams, to provide wearable uniforms and acceptable headgear?
