Explained: Why Australia's Test shirts look different

Australia's Test whites will look a little different this summer.

For the first time, the Australia men's Test team shirt will feature a large sponsor logo across the front.

And the new look is set to become a fixture of Test cricket, six months after it was introduced on a trial basis, with the International Cricket Council quietly making the extra sponsor space permanent.

The Australia A side were the first to wear the updated whites in their matches against the touring Indians, starting with their three-day fixture at Drummoyne Oval last week.

The Indian side is also wearing a Test shirt with a sponsor's logo on the front.

Three of the new-look shirts, signed by the entire Australian Test squad, will be auctioned later in the summer to raise funds for Cricket Australia's charity partners.

In June, the ICC approved a handful of interim measures designed to help the sport resume during the COVID19 pandemic, such as the return of non-neutral umpires and banning the use of saliva to polish the ball.

Another change saw sponsor's logos on Test shirts become far more prominent than ever before. As cricket boards around the world struggled with a drop in commercial revenue due to the pandemic, the ICC gave nations scope to recoup some losses by allowing them to sell real estate on their shirt front.

By relaxing its heavily-regulated clothing and equipment policy, the ICC made an additional 206.45cm² (32in²) area across the front of the shirt and sweaters available for sponsor branding.

England, the West Indies, Pakistan and New Zealand have all since displayed the bigger sponsor logos on their shirt fronts (although only the West Indies and Pakistan have taken up the option of including it on sweaters).

Australia, who have not played a Test since January's New Year's match with New Zealand in Sydney, will follow suit this summer against India, with an Alinta Energy logo displayed across the front of the player's shirts. 

Alinta already has its logo on the right breast of the Australian men's Test shirt for matches played at home (Qantas is worn for away Tests) while Alinta also features prominently on the front of the ODI and T20 shirt.

While prominent sponsor's logos have been commonplace in limited-overs cricket for decades, Test shirts and sweaters had been 'clean', with only smaller logos – no bigger than 64.5cm² (10in²) – permitted on the breast and the sleeve.

The ICC had indicated the additional sponsorship branding would be allowed "through to the end of the 2020-21 season", but the governing body has decided to permanently implement this change.

It's the second major change to Test whites in the past 18 months, following the addition of player names and numbers that were introduced to the back of shirts by the ICC in mid-2019.

Australia and England were the first teams to feature names and numbers in last year's Ashes series with the change made as part of the introduction of the World Test Championship.

Vodafone Test Series v India 2020-21

Australia Test squad: Tim Paine (c), Sean Abbott, Joe Burns, Pat Cummins, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Marnus Labuschagne, Nathan Lyon, Michael Neser, James Pattinson, Will Pucovski, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Mitchell Swepson, Matthew Wade, David Warner

India Test squad: Virat Kohli (c) (first Test only), Ajinkya Rahane (vice-captain), Rohit Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, Prithvi Shaw, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hanuma Vihari, Shubman Gill, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Rishabh Pant (wk), Jasprit Bumrah, Mohammed Shami, Umesh Yadav, Navdeep Saini, Kuldeep Yadav, Ravindra Jadeja, Ravichandran Ashwin, Mohammed Siraj

First Test: December 17-21, Adelaide Oval, 3pm AEDT (day-night)

Second Test: December 26-30, MCG, 10.30am AEDT

Third Test: January 7-11, SCG, 10.30am AEDT

Fourth Test: January 15-19, Gabba, 11am AEDT