These are all qualities of the athlete and those of the photographer covering them as well. Each sport has predictable and unpredictable moments. For instance, in cricket, photographers will have opportunities to capture jump shots, players diving to make the crease, diving to take a catch, diving to field the ball, a bowler leaping in the air as he bowls, a batsman screaming in joy on reaching his century, etc. Understanding the timing of these predictable actions allows a photographer to capture the peak moment; when the action is most dramatic.

Before I start editing I always have a brief chat with the photographers about what could be the day’s great picture. The staff never fail to deliver and meet expectations. I briefed two photographers covering matches from the quarter-finals onwards not to forget to look for emotion in the players and the fans. A good number of the best shots come from the crowd. I received a bunch of nice pictures of the crowd from the final.

While editing pictures from the semi-final match between arch rivals India and Pakistan, I thought I should leave the confines of our New Delhi desk and photograph the match in Mohali. The Mohali semi-final match had a few news angles attached to it. Firstly, India and Pakistan were playing each other after a long time; secondly the Indian Prime Minister and his Pakistan counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani were watching the match in the stands after the latter accepted an invite from Manmohan Singh to watch the match. It was a historic moment where one could see the prime ministers of two nuclear-armed countries sitting side-by-side enjoying the game. But in the end, I am glad I edited their pictures.

It was difficult to juggle everything during the India-Pakistan semi-finals because sport was mixed up with politics. One of the two photographers covering the match called an hour before the match saying Getty Images would pool the pix of Indian and Pakistan Prime Ministers meeting with players of both countries on the field. I called my manager in Singapore to convey the message to him.

I was worried about the pictures of the two PMs watching the match from the gallery. I knew I would receive a couple of pictures of hand-shakes of the two PMs with the players on the field from the Reuters photographers and I received them as predicted.

As the match approached its climax, I sensed Pakistan was going to lose. I started calling photographers for reaction pix, which we received from around the country.

HORIZONTAL SHOTS:

Most cricket pictures are good verticals. Think about the shape of humans; they are taller than they are wide. To fill the frame with a person playing a sport, they fit the frame better when the camera is held vertically. Even for a tight head shot, it's a better vertical. A lot of sports shots, in particular if it is of an
individual, are shot vertically.

However, I thought of horizontal frames while going through each frame. Horizontal frames are extensively used by online slideshows and I was trying to find horizontal frames allowing for them to be published as double page spreads.

I sent on the wire a varied selection of pictures of dejection, jubilation and batsmen playing shots following the photographic mantra "The Rule of Thirds", which says that if you divide the frame into a third vertically and horizontally and place the subject where the lines intersect, the resulting photo is more interesting.

KNOW YOUR SPORT, KNOW YOUR PLAYERS:

A photographer should know what he/she is covering and who they have shot. I was lucky that we had photographers who were fully aware of all the players. I edited and processed most of the matches and there was hardly a moment when I needed a photographer's help to identify any player who was in the frame.

For the big final in Mumbai, we were allotted only two tickets by the ICC. My colleagues Adnan Abidi and Vivek Prakash pulled a few strings to get us two more just in time for the big game. The development gave me confidence as we had four expert photographers on the job and for this big day I had another colleague Rob Dawson in Singapore helping edit and process. We stayed in touch through the final while moving pictures on to the wire. We were first to hit the wire on a number of occasions.

As India inched towards victory, I sent a message to another editor/processor to get ready for celebration pictures and Vivek quickly took and transmitted the images. They came to us virtually live.

I knew it was never going to be easy to edit and process such a big event but at the same time I knew it was doable. Thanks to all involved, it went smoothly. While the matches were being played in three countries, I anchored the operation from New Delhi. For 42 days it was non-stop work. Now, it is time to put my legs up and rejuvenate.

We headed to the stadium at around 10am, well before the 2.30pm start. Traffic was backed up a long way. There was only one road leading to it and we weren't sure if it was fans waving flags and blowing horns, buses and four wheel drives, scooters or the cops that were in charge. Fellow photographer Andrew Caballero-Reynolds got nervous because on his last 3 trips to stadiums, the vehicle he's been in has blown a tire. Lucky we made it in one piece. There were thousands of fans queuing in the searing heat to get into the ground, watched over by the usual stick-wielding police in khaki suits.

I installed a remote camera high on a TV tower above the stands, hooked up by usb cable to a laptop, both powered by a 25m extension cord we rented for 150 rupees (about 4 dollars) from a local shop that usually rents them out for weddings. The remote would capture the action from a different angle and would fire whenever I wanted it to from my field side position. I had the laptop running on a data card so the pictures would automatically be downloaded and transmitted to our editing system live, so that we didn't have to wait for the break inbetween innings to get the disk and edit pictures. It was going to provide some great pictures from the match.

As it got closer to the start of the match, fans packed the stadium and the familiar chants began - "Jeeta bhai jeetega!! Indiaaaaa jeetega!!!" (We'll win brother, we'll win, India will win!!!) I was torn, as someone who was born in India but has an Australian passport, I wasn't sure who to support. I decided to support New Zealand, my other nationality, to evade having to choose.

Australia had a fairly tame start to the match. Captain Ricky Ponting scored a century as Australia posted a total of 260. Amit Dave, Andrew and myself were burnt to a crisp in the unforgiving Gujarat heat as we covered the innings. At least I had water on my side; they forgot to bring any for the photographers at Andrew and Amit's positions.

India would need 261 to win, and as the Indian innings started, the atmosphere in the ground was electric. The crowd was roaring with Sachin Tendulkar batting, you could only hear one thing echoing from every stand: "Sachin, Saaachiiinnn!!!!" Sachin didn't go onto score a century, but he did make 50 runs, and at the end of the day India overcame their old opponents in a stunning victory which broke 12 years of Australian domination at the world cup.

My favorite pictures from the match include Andrew's Ponting's century and Amit's batting shot of India's main man Yuvraj Singh.

A split-second picture of a run-out where I captured the precise moment David Hussey knocked the bails off the stumps (I do it by using the focus preset on my 500mm lens to whatever end of the pitch I'm not watching, that way when it does come to a run out I can use the focus ring to quickly lock onto the wickets and fire the shutter without thinking, even if I have less than a second to do it). I also had the same picture on my remote, as well as a nice moment of Zaheer Khan taking a catch off his own bowling.

Andrew captured Brett Lee with a gash to his head, telling the story of the beating the Australians took. I had Ponting walking off the field, seemingly into the darkness of a night of soul-searching.

By contrast, the Indians were ecstatic. The first picture we sent of the victory was actually off my remote, since it was live the picture hit the wire while we were still shooting the hugging and handshaking.

The field side pictures tell the story: India bursting with joy as they send Australia to the airport and advance to the next round. The whole stadium was in a roar as India advanced to a mouthwatering semi-final clash that will take place in Mohali.

The semi final to come: India v. Pakistan, the ultimate cricket match between two testy nuclear-armed neighbors with fiercely competitive cricket teams. It's about a lot more than just cricket. It's going to be absolutely electric. I can't wait to shoot it.

The cricket World Cup being played in the sub-continent has provided some dramatic matches but also its share of incidents. Your View contributor Abhishek N.Chinnappa was on the scene to capture this dramatic moment when fans lining up to buy tickets for a match were hit by police.

View this week's Your View showcase here.

Reuters' lean mean team of photographers have fanned out across three countries in the subcontinent - India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka - as we get stuck into covering the first round of the tournament. Photographers Adnan Abidi, Andrew Biraj, Amit Dave, Andrew Caballero-Reynolds, Dinuka Liyanawatte, Rupak De Chowdhury, Danish Siddiqui and myself have started crisscrossing our territories. Philip Brown, who is on an "embed" with the English cricket team, has already covered two cities. Altaf Bhat in New Delhi is anchoring the operation as the main editor for the tournament with me lending a hand on days when I'm not on the move, shooting training or covering a match.

Covering cricket in the subcontinent is not as straightforward as one might think - for one thing, we're worried about tight travel schedules and the possibility of flight delays - which thankfully haven't happened yet.

A range of problems beset every one of us in this first week of matches.

At the opening ceremony in Dhaka, the stadium wireless went down, as did the phone network, leaving everyone stranded with no way to file anything, and it didn't recover until well into the ceremony. Andrew Biraj had pictures of a lavish ceremony featuring traditional hand-pulled rickshaws and performers playing a cricket suspended from wires, on a giant vertical backdrop.

Adnan turned up in Chennai and was told no one could move from their shooting position, which surprised every photographer who came to cover the match.

Philip arrived in Bangalore to police charging at people with sticks after they got angry about waiting overnight for tickets and not getting any. The police chief of Bangalore pretty much summed it up in a news conference the next day, where he said "It's not a new thing... It's difficult for the people who have lived in Europe and in America to understand..." to open chuckles from reporters. Phil's fantastic picture helps us understand a scene that probably will only ever be seen in the subcontinent.

Phil then went to Chinnaswamy stadium to cover the India vs. England match to find that pitchside power didn't work at the start of the match.

I arrived in Nagpur, where the media bus for one of my matches ran worryingly late. The wireless connection was so slow I could barely load a web page. Wireless, CDMA, 3G and GPRS all didn't work, and I had to set up my laptop on a LAN cable in a press box 10 minutes away from pitchside and run between the two constantly to get pictures out.

Despite all of these hiccups - and let's face it nothing in this part of the world would be fun without the "will it really work?" factor - things are getting off to a good start and the fans and us are starting to get into the matches.

The first match produced an outstanding 175-run knock from India's Virender Sehwag which helped India win against Bangladesh, an important ego boost since India was kicked out of the last world cup by the same team; Andrew Biraj captured the moment of glory.

Before the Australia vs. New Zealand match, kiwi players held a somber moment of silence to remember the victims of the Christchurch earthquake, with many players visibly weeping. I wondered how they managed to play through the whole match, especially given the kind of destruction Australia wreaked on their bowling and batting, the expression in Mitchell Johnson's face as he celebrated taking a wicket summing up the "no mercy" approach.

This past weekend produced two of the best one-day-internationals I have watched in a long time. On Saturday night, I was on the edge of my seat as I edited Pakistan vs. Sri Lanka in Colombo - a thrilling, competitive match which Pakistan eventually won with captain Shahid Afridi destroying the Sri Lankan batting order despite some brave performances by their batsmen.

Dinuka Liayanawatte captured the desperation of the contest to score runs as the cricket bat flew out of the hand of Sri Lanka's Chamara Silva's hands as he heaved at the ball with all his might.

Dinuka also captured the key moment in cricket - harder to get than it looks - of wickets being skittled by a ball, this image showing the exact moment the ball hit the stumps.

Andrew Caballero-Reynolds captured the elation of Pakistan's captain Shahid Afridi as he brought the Sri Lankan batting order to its knees.

On Sunday, Altaf had a nail-biting time editing India vs. England, which came down to the very last ball (England needed two runs to win off one ball) which ended in a tie.

A great batting display by the "little master" Sachin Tendulkar was outdone by England's captain Andrew Strauss. The whole subcontinent must have been as hooked to television sets as I was to the one at the bar in my hotel.

Monday and Tuesday saw two hat-tricks in two days (A hat trick is when a bowler dismisses 3 batsmen in 3 consecutive deliveries, for our non-cricketing friends - it's a rare thing to see - and two in two days is almost unheard of.)

First from the West Indies' Kemar Roach.

And second from Sri Lanka's Lasith Malinga.

Just when you thought you'd seen the best match you were going to see in a while, the Irish - who else but the Irish - produced a stunning upset when they defeated England this evening. England had set what looked like an impossible target, and with five men down, the result looked like a foregone conclusion. Enter Kevin O'Brien, a tall, purple-haired Irishman who blasted his way through the English attack with brutal power, setting a record for the fastest ever century scored in World Cup history - 100 runs off just 50 balls. Not to mention one of the most powerful shots I've ever seen in cricket, the ball hit 105 metres into the air, over the boundary and nearly out of the stadium for six unbelievable runs. Phil's pictures of the elated O'Brien say it all.

The post match celebration was nothing short of ecstatic, you'd think the Irish team had actually won the world cup! The luck of the Irish as they say.

As Altaf said in his blog post, Let the games begin! Well, the games have begun - let this be your invitation to understand what drives a billion people crazy - through pictures, if nothing else!

Reuters is running a live blog with pictures and commentary from each match, which can be followed here.

We also have a blackberry app with constantly updating pictures from matches live, which can be downloaded here.

As the cricket World Cup draws closer, the pulse rate of the players and their fans from the 14 participating nations is surely rising.

The build up to the quadrennial event, the equivalent of the FIFA soccer world cup, has been nothing short of spectacular. Despite the game grappling with a spot-fixing saga and an under-prepared Eden Gardens stadium in Kolkata losing the hosts a marquee match against England, the enthusiasm of having a “good game” seems to have taken over. Like the previous editions, the 10th ICC world cup will also see some of the great cricketers saying “Goodbye” to the gentleman’s game and all of them would want to lay their hands on the coveted trophy.

Fans will be seeing Ricky Ponting, Muthaiah Muralitharan, Sachin Tendulkar and probably Jacques Kallis for the last time at a world cup but it will be Sachin, who will want to etch his name on the winners’ trophy more than anyone else. The master blaster has achieved almost everything that is there to achieve in the game of cricket but the world cup has remained elusive.

There will surely be new heroes found for their respective nations and new stars will appear on the horizon. But there are already some who I will be keenly watching during the 45 day event. From India, the most exciting youngster to emerge since the master blaster has been Virat Kohli. In the limited opportunities he has got, Kohli has proved that he is the man for the future.

Colin Ingram from South Africa will be another young lad to watch alongside Ahmad Shehzad, Umar Akmal (from Pakistan), Darren Bravo from the West Indies and Angelo Mathews from Sri Lanka.

In the bowling department, spinners will hold the key on the slower and turning tracks of the subcontinent. It might not be the run feast that is anticipated on the pitches in this part of the world but batting should be easier if the batsmen are willing to grind.

This is perhaps the first world cup where no team is a clear favourite. I, for one, would not bet all my money on one horse. If India is the favourite to lift the cup for second time, South Africa is not too far. England after their Ashes victory have gained momentum.

With Pakistan-born leggie Imran Tahir, South Africa might have finally got the weapon that has been missing from their armour over the years. England should do well at this world cup as they have one of the most balanced units with the tail that might seem long but can dig in on an odd occasion. Sri Lanka, the co-host along with India and Bangladesh, are exactly in the same mould as the English.

One can never rule out Australia. They sneaked into the Super Six stage in 1999 by the skin of their teeth, on a better net run rate than the West Indies and New Zealand. Thereon, the side led by mercurial Steve Waugh turned the heat on and won (or infamously tied) all the following five matches including the title game against Pakistan.

Then there are the enigmatic Pakistan. Their only triumph, 1992 World Cup, came when they were written off and needed a favourable result from the Aussie-Windies tie to progress to the semis. The green shirts have enough firepower in batting to decimate any attack but are also capable of imploding against pedestrian bowling. Their bowling department can’t be any different as it has never been about skills but application that decides the outcome of the game they are playing.

Among the minnows, Bangladesh, playing on the home soil, will be dangerous but Ireland seem to be the most-likely to cause some red faces over the next 45 days.

The logo for 2011 cricket world cup is in the shape of a colourful cricket ball with people in action. It represents the game itself and the people in action with hands up, cheering and shouting. Lets Play!

The Making Of A Cricket Ball - Cricket World Cup Preview from Vivek Prakash on Vimeo.

I was in school when news broke that a young boy was going to be part of the Indian cricket team to tour Pakistan under a new captain -- Krishnamachari Srikkant. No one in the world had any doubts about the talented young boy from Mumbai but to throw him in the deep end to face the pace battery of Pakistan, led by Wasim Akram and the spin wizardry of Abdul Qadir, who had earned himself a sobriquet of "Googly" for foxing the batsmen world over, had many questioning the wisdom of his selection.

But Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar -- who would prove to be the real baby-faced assassin of all bowling attacks and a nightmare for bowlers of legendary stature like Shane Warne -- had other ideas.

It was in November 1989, when Sachin was packing his bags for the Pakistan tour, that my school sports coach was giving batting tips to us ahead of a game against a school rival.

Although I doubt my coach had ever watched Sachin play, he was full of praise for the then 16-year-old. I am sure he must have gone through the interviews and column spaces dedicated to him to find a replacement for the aging middle order of the Indian cricket team in late 1980s. Most of the talking and writing revolved around two young schoolmates from Mumbai who had shared a world record partnership of over 600 runs -- Sachin and Vinod Kambli.

The duo would play many games -- Test matches as well as One Day Internationals -- but Sachin has since outlived many careers. He is not the oldest person on the circuit but he has played more years and more games than all the current active cricket players.

There are perhaps only three batting records that Sachin does not own -- he does not have the highest score in a Test match (that is with Brian Lara who scored 400 in an innings against England), he does not have the highest test match innings average (that rests with Don Bradman who averaged 99.96) and he does not have the highest number of first class centuries (that rests with Jack Hobbs who scored 119 centuries in his first class career).

The way Sachin is playing these days, despite being all of 37 years and nearly seven months old, Bradman’s will be the only record that shall remain out of his reach. If he can score 200 in a 50-over game, the only player to have done it in 39 years of ODI cricket, 400 in a Test inning is not far fetched. The 119 centuries is still not out of his reach but he will have to play more domestic cricket to add to his tally of 76 first class hundreds. Not that the maestro does not like to play domestic cricket, he has opted out for two reasons – to prolong his international career which was threatened by an elbow injury and to allow more youngsters to showcase their talent.

However, the going has not been easy for the Little Master, as the statistics might make one believe. Carrying the hopes and expectations of over a billion people is not an easy task. So, the first ODI century, on September 9, 1994 against Australia in Sri Lanka at Colombo, was five years into his career but looking back it came 16 years ago. He has since scored 45 more -- almost one every eighth inning.

For many people -- not only in India -- if cricket is religion, Sachin is its God. He's achieved so much that it will take more than a lifetime for even good batsmen to emulate him but it is his appetite for cricket, runs and nuances attached to the game that set him apart from the rest.

Look at his career figures in Tests and ODIs:

Matches Innings Not-outs Runs Highest Score Average 100's 50's
Tests 172 282 30 14292 248* 56.71 49 58
ODIs 442 431 41 17598 200* 45.12 46 93

A couple of weeks ago Sachin, after over two decades of his cricket, completed another milestone when he hit a ball from Australia's Nathan Hauritz for a boundary to complete 14,000 test runs, the highest ever from a batsmen in the world of cricket.

Probably one of the reasons why Bradman said that the only batsmen in whom he saw his likeness was Sachin Tendulkar.

Sachin has been in such good nick over the past two years that he has won the ICC (International Cricket Council) Cricketer of the Year Award. He has also regained number 1 position in the ICC test rankings after eight years. This year has been great for Sachin. He averages 97.69 in tests and 204 in ODI for this year. He would have crossed the 50 century mark in ODIs long back had he not fell in the nervous 90s far too often.
That would often bring in the criticism that Sachin plays more for himself and he has not played match winning or match saving knocks too often.

In Sachin's career up to the mid-1990s, one has to think whether he was the only batsman in the Indian line up who could stand up to any bowler.

Over the years, with the emergence of Saurav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid and V.V. S Laxman as support batsmen to the maestro, the win percentage for India when Sachin scores big has also improved. This again supports the assertion that he was the only batsman in the team in his early career. Cricket is a team game and solo shows can win you some, but not all, games.

Sachin attributes his poise to his father Ramesh Tendulkar, a poet and novelist rather than a cricket fan. "I grew up looking at my father as to how to behave. In watching him, I grasped so many things. His own temperament was of a calm person. He was very composed and I never saw anger in him. To me, that was fascinating." Sachin said in a recent interview to one of the country's leading newspapers.

ANOTHER FEAT

Sachin on February 23 this year became the first batsman to score a double century in ODI history when he pushed a delivery from South Africa’s Charl Langeveldt through the off-side and ran himself into the history books to become the first man to score 200 in an ODI.

Since the introduction of ODI in 1971, the cricket world had to wait nearly four decades to see a batsman score 200. The previous highest score in an ODI was shared by Pakistan's Saeed Anwar (194 against India in 1997) and Zimbabwean Charles Coventry (194 not out against Bangladesh in 2009).

Like many of his shots, even Sachin's celebrations have become a trademark. As the crowd erupted with unbridled joy, Sachin took off his helmet and looked skyward.

After Sachin scored his double century, his fans across the cricket-mad country celebrated by lighting firecrackers, beating drums and dancing on the streets.

Now all eyes are on him once again as he is set to add another feather to his cap. Many are anticipating that the little master will complete his 50th century during the ongoing series against New Zealand.

Six Sri Lankan cricketers and their British assistant coach were wounded when gunmen attacked their bus as it drove under police escort to the Gaddafi stadium in Lahore.  Five policemen were killed.

The death toll was small by South Asian standards.  But what defined it -- beyond the audacity and apparent sophistication of the attack -- was the assault on the identity of a country where cricket, as in neighbouring India, is a national obsession.

"An ambush targeting the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team in Lahore earlier this morning has literally sent waves of disbelief and shock across Pakistan," said a post on Metroblogging Lahore. "Citizens of Lahore are specifically terrified at the extent of sophisticated weaponry used by terrorists in an incident that caused unprecedented damage to the country's image and its cricketing future."

"Why can't we ever just have a slow news day ... every day there's something new," complained another post on Twitter.

South Asia is no stranger to violence, from the days of partition onwards. But there seems to me to be something qualitatively quite different in what is going on now, in which brutality and the alienation of the local population is not so much incidental but central to the method.

It's been there in the assault on traditional Pakistani music and culture, in the deliberately grisly videotaped beheading of a Polish geologist last month, in the targeting of girls' schools in the Swat valley and now in the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers.

Even in darkest days of the Kashmir insurgency which set Pakistan and India at each other's throats you didn't see anything like this -- in fact one of the signs of normal life there came from boys out in the street playing cricket.  In Afghanistan, the hardline Taliban which banned most sports appear to have been less hostile to cricket, as Reuters Kabul correspondent Jon Hemming wrote in this feature about the country's fledgling national cricket team. I've even seen Pakistani soldiers spontaneously playing cricket the harsh terrain of the Siachen battlefield beyond Kashmir, bowling a few balls in the drizzling snow under the lee of steep mountain walls.

Pakistani officials are already speculating about Indian involvement in the attack on the Sri Lankan cricketers, in revenge for last year's assault on Mumbai.  This speculation will probably run and run -- it's echoing through comments on blogs and on Twitter. But it may obscure a more important point. When you attack a national institution like cricket, it's an expression of brute power, an assault on culture akin to the burning of books.

According to the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid, quoted by the Independent: "I think this is a deliberate attempt to undermine the government at the time when there is a huge political crisis in the country. They are trying to create a vacuum of power in which eventually they can take over."

(Reuters photo: Pakistan's Salman Butt in match against Sri Lanka)

The Indian cricket board have worked hard to resurrect action on the field by persuading England to agree to return to complete a two-test series, offering all support to allay fears of their players for their safety.

The Indian media have been busy reporting the aftermath of the attacks and there has been furious debate in the British media whether it is proper for the England players to return to India this soon.

Whether sports should go on in turbulent times has been debated for ages. At the 1972 Munich Games, Olympics chiefs decided the show would go on despite Palestinian gunmen killing 11 Israeli athletes and officials.

Cricket teams are refusing to travel to Pakistan because of security concerns by teams in the wake of many suicide bombings.

Some even doubt whether the sub-continent can hold the 2011 World Cup.

Should cricket go on in India in the middle of the latest crisis? Can Indians turn their minds to their first love?

Instead, the ‘Prince of Kolkata’ was dismissed first ball in his final innings, becoming only the second cricketer after England’s Billy Griffith to score a century in his first test innings and a duck in his last.

India went on to win the test, sealing their first series victory over Australia in seven years. But Ganguly’s bid to go out with a bang had fizzled out.

Or so we thought.

After the match and the presentation ceremony, his admirers clamoured for the 36-year-old left-hander to come out of the players’ dressing room.

Ganguly obliged, took off his shirt and hurled it into the midst of his delirious fans.

It was a throwback to 2002 when a frenzied Ganguly took off his shirt and waved it from the Lord’s balcony after India achieved an improbable win against England in a one-day tri-series final.

Many felt the gesture simply reinforced Ganguly’s image as unpredictable and aggressive, although he appears to have mellowed since then.

At Nagpur, Ganguly showed his old flamboyance and popularity gained from elegant batting and leadership still remained.

Taking a final look at his fans, a bare-chested Ganguly walked off into the dressing room.

He had signed off in style.