Access Hollywood: Topley's kit vision a 'love letter to cricket'

Cricket isn't cool.

To your average American, cricket is the boring, endless, long-lost cousin of baseball that only stops so the players can break for tea.

But England fast bowler Reece Topley wants to change that perception.

Almost a decade ago, Topley began what would become an annual excursion of escaping to Los Angeles to avoid the "dire" English winter.

There, the tall left-armer discovered that Rodney Cutting, the father of his former teammate West Indian quick Fidel Edwards, was the groundskeeper at the Van Nuys cricket field in the city's northwest. 

Cutting gave him access to the nets, allowing Topley to stay in shape while enjoying the regular December sunshine on the northern side of the Hollywood hills, a luxury he wouldn’t get back home. 

Then, as his trips to LA became more frequent, his network grew. He began playing regular, albeit very casual, games of soccer around the area with "people from the entertainment industry".

Hanging with this crowd offered Topley the chance to make some high-profile connections – recently these soccer games took him to the house of pop superstar Rod Stewart. This idyllic American off-season would occasionally be interrupted by a quick assignment to Dubai or Australia for franchise cricket, where the 32-year-old is a sought-after asset. But given they were unaware of his talents, Topley’s unexplained exits often left his new-found footballing friends wondering where he kept disappearing to.

When the idea was then floated that the group should play a pick-up game of cricket, the nucleus for Hollywood Cricket was born: A lifestyle and fashion brand heavily inspired by cricket's introduction to the US west coast a century ago.

"The bottom line of all of this is a love letter to cricket because it's given me so much," Topley told cricket.com.au.

"I just want to do cool things and make cool things that have a nod to cricket … the history of cricket in Hollywood is the chosen vessel to try and create those products and events. There's nothing off limits."

Topley isn’t the first Brit to venture west to California and start playing cricket. Almost 100 years earlier, that trend was started by Sir Charles Aubrey Smith.

Smith was a fast bowler for Sussex who bowled with a curved approach to the crease that was so iconic it earned him the nickname 'Round the Corner'.

He played a sole Test for England, which he captained, taking 5-19 against South Africa in Johannesburg in 1889. Smith moved to the USA to pursue a career in film and in 1932 founded the Hollywood Cricket Club, in the suburb of Burbank, as a refuge for he and other English expats, mostly actors, who missed the comforts of home.

"It's a great story," Topley said. "We tried to make a bit of a timeline and piece together a few things, and even spoke to some people that had played for it in its last form in the 1970s and 80s. By doing that, we got the blessing in terms of trying to reenact or bring it back with the same kind of tones and energy.

"The emotions we're trying to evoke, which is very much British, (are) white picket fences and cable knit jumpers and cucumber sandwiches. With franchise cricket becoming more and more prevalent, that's kind of gone out of the game.

"As we dove more into it, we were like: OK, I think this has got some legs as a lifestyle brand."

It's been a year since the official launch. Topley has got the website and Instagram page up and running, with several styles of vintage-looking clothing available on the shop. He designed all of these, with a strong flavour of early-to-mid-1900s cricket attire coming through the final products, which are produced in downtown LA.

He's currently finalising the details of this year's annual Hollywood CC 'match', after the success of last year's. There's been some interest from various entrepreneurs and he's got some trusted friends on board to help with the project in New Zealand's Lockie Ferguson and Australia's Adam Zampa.

"It's got some people behind it that are quite successful in the business, so I think it's got a chance," Zampa told cricket.com.au.

"The clothes are cool, but there's a concept behind it too. The whole backstory … I think there's a market in that.

"You look at Aimé Leon Door, Lacoste, those bigger brands who have a bit of a sporting background and offer an affluent kind of clothing. (This is) similar, but it's for cricket."

While Topley doesn't know where or what Hollywood Cricket will be in five years, there's already been plenty he has accomplished. There was the collaboration with English bat maker Millichamp and Hall and the partnership with the local Clark Street Diner, who supplied the tea time refreshments at last year's match.

Topley hinted at some "fashion collaborations" in the works and is hopeful this year's match will take place at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), a venue that hosted an Australian side featuring Sir Don Bradman in 1932. The man who organised that match was Aubrey Smith, in conjunction with Aussie tour manager (and former Test player) Arthur Mailey.

"Those interesting stories, we're trying to almost recreate those," Topley said.

"Hopefully everything we do is a cool product and it grows cricket for people that don't necessarily know about it."