I cannot for the life of me see why the umpires, the only two people on a cricket field who are not going to get grass stains on their knees, are the only two people allowed to wear dark trousers.

Whitehorn’s joke turns on a small sartorial oddity in traditional cricket: umpires, who do the least sliding, kneeling, and diving, are nevertheless the ones permitted (or expected) to wear dark trousers. By pointing out that the people least likely to suffer visible grass stains are dressed in the most stain-concealing color, she highlights how customs can persist even when their practical rationale is inverted. The line also gently punctures cricket’s aura of formality—suggesting that the sport’s rules and hierarchies extend beyond play into clothing, sometimes in ways that are more about tradition and authority than common sense.