Cricket without boundaries

from Photographers Blog:

Editing thousands of cricket pictures a day

Sports and Action photography is all about timing. It’s about reacting. It’s about being in the right place at the right time and it’s about execution.

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.

from Photographers Blog:

Clash of two cricketing titans

The second quarter-final of the cricket world cup was a clash between two huge teams. India, the world's no. 1 team with its power batting lineup. Australia, three-time world champions who have reigned supreme over the game for 12 years. Whoever won, it would be a huge story. Whoever lost, it would be a huge story.

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.

from Our Take on Your Take:

Cricket line-up turns violent

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.

from Photographers Blog:

Cricket snippets

We're into March, and the ICC Cricket World Cup is well under way. Just 32 more days to go (yes, thirty-two!) until the tournament comes to a close with a final showdown in Mumbai on April 2.

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.

from Photographers Blog:

2011 Cricket World Cup: Let’s play

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.

from Photographers Blog:

Before a ball is bowled

Reuters Photographer Parivartan Sharma takes us to the town of Meerut, north of Delhi, where cricket balls are still being made the old-fashioned way - by hand. India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will co-host the 2011 Cricket World Cup starting on February 19.

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

25 Years – Memories of a Miracle

Back in the early 80s, cricket had already captured the hearts and minds of impressionable kids like me, my elder brother and our band of boys who had nothing but disdain for those ‘studious’ kids who were more into science clubs and lending libraries.

Hardy Boys, Famous Five and Nancy Drew were considered a conspiracy hatched by mothers to keep kids at home. While other kids went to bed safely tucking their favourite book under the pillow, I hit the bed with my batting pads and gloves on. India Poised!

Luckily, our mother felt better off sending us to the playground in our residential colony rather than spend money on books and a lot more on replacing broken lamp shades and window panes – collateral damage as my brother and I played eleven-a-side ‘Test’ matches at home, where the bowling side got a chance to bat only after the entire opposition was bowled out.

Given my cricketing skills, my brother and his ‘Indian’ team (which again is him calling himself everything from Kapil Dev to Roger Binny to Madan Lal) never took more than 5 overs to clean up my batting order, irrespective of who I was representing the Aussies, the Windies or the Englishmen.

Coming to think of it, he always got to be India and won too, something which I never accepted in the true spirit of the game.

As I dragged myself away from the wicket after trying a left-handed wallop a-la Graham Yallop, I always felt ‘it’s just not cricket.’ I hated ‘India’ though Sunil Gavaskar was my favourite and I was plotting moves to hijack my brother’s Indian team.

That opportunity presented itself when the World Cup came calling to Indian homes in 1983. We still didn’t have a TV at home (we had to wait till 1986) and our parents had already warned us against either pestering them to buy a TV or seeking permission to go over to our neighbour’s place (one of them had a Dyanora Colour TV and the other had a Solidaire) to watch.