Left field

Shooting the Rugby World Cup

In the latest installment, South Africa-based photographer Mike Hutchings describes the gear he can’t live without and what makes shooting rugby different from his usual assignments.

Reuters RWC Photographers #4 from Tim Wimborne on Vimeo.

In the xxx third installment, Sydney-based photographer Tim Wimborne describes what is necessary to keep the file fresh throughout the tournament and to satisfy different client needs.

Reuters RWC Photographers #3 v2.0 from Tim Wimborne on Vimeo.

In the second of a series of multimedia pieces, Bucharest-based photographer Bogdan Cristel talks about the focus required to cover the Rugby World Cup.

from India Insight:

An Indian cricket coach for team India?

The Indian cricket team has not had a full-time local coach in over a decade since John Wright took over possibly the second most challenging job in world cricket in 2000. Barring the Greg Chappell debacle, the two other foreign coaches the team has employed have delivered.

India made the finals of the 2003 World Cup under Wright, and Gary Kirsten signed off after the team were crowned world champions in 2011. Interestingly, both Kirsten and Wright had inherited a team full of superstars low on confidence.

Wright took over the reins in the aftermath of the match- fixing crisis of 1999, and Kirsten after the 2007 World Cup disaster (though a victory in the inaugural T20 World Cup under an interim coach, Indian Lalchand Rajput, somewhat satiated fans).

Chappell, though, had a team that could potentially be world beaters -- eerily like the batch of 2011 -- but his tenure was hardly the golden age of Indian cricket.

That's why it’s important to not miss a step here. In the world of Indian cricket, dreams can easily turn into nightmares.

And now with the euphoria of the World Cup victory over, a country of a billion armchair critics awaits the next appointee. Chances are it might be another foreign assignee. But for a reasonably settled team, that needs tips to handle pressure more than batting advice, the question begs to be answered -- why not an Indian coach?

from India Insight:

Doesn’t anyone love the underdog anymore?

It is said that everyone loves the underdog. You can't fault Ireland if they disagree.

Days after cricket's showpiece event ended, the game's governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC) announced its decision to trim the next two World Cups to just 10 teams and throw out the associate nations from the 2015 edition, featuring only its 10 full members. The 10 spots for the 2019 edition will be determined through qualification.

"This is not a World Cup, it's a glorified Champions Trophy," said Ireland's captain William Porterfield, after the ICC's decision to trim the 2015 World Cup that will see associate teams like Ireland and Netherlands miss out on the chance to rub shoulders with the best of the cricketing world.

Porterfield has a point there. Given that much of the excitement and drama of the initial group stage games of the recently concluded 2011 edition -- hailed by some experts as “the best World Cup of all time” -- was provided by his brilliantly spirited and gutsy  team, it is difficult not to agree that Ireland may have been hard done by. Associate member nations will now have to wait until 2019 for a chance to compete again.

Without Ireland, the 2015 edition could play out rather flatly -- and more worryingly -- predictably. Without Ireland, we would not have witnessed one of the greatest one-day innings of all time in the form of Kevin O'Brien.

Without Ireland (and the other associate teams), the 2015 World Cup will be reduced to the status of a league of extraordinary cricketers battling it out for glory.

In 2007, we witnessed the dullest World Cup of all time. Australia came, saw and conquered. It was a foregone conclusion even before the tournament began. What made it even more unbearable was the fact that the teams had to play a second round of unending, insipid group stage games -- the Super Eights, as it was called, which was anything but super -- after the first round was done and dusted with and the tournament's biggest draws, India and Pakistan, had been sent packing.

from Reuters Soccer Blog:

Will God be Brazilian in 2014?

"God is Brazilian" is a favourite phrase for Brazilians when fortune smiles on their country.

Former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva famously uttered it after massive new oil reserves were discovered off the coast in 2007.

Often, it is used with a dose of irony after something turns out right even when circumstances suggested it would or should not -- such as a game where Brazil find themselves on the back foot for 89 minutes and then sneak a late winner.

The phrase would also fit perfectly if, having dallied and left preparations to the last possible moment, Brazil pulled off a successful and seamless World Cup in 2014.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter highlighted concerns when he said: "It's tomorrow, the Brazilians think its just the day after tomorrow."

He added that Brazil were further behind than predecessors South Africa had been three years before the 2010 tournament.

His comments clearly tweaked Brazilian nerves and drew an angry response from Ricardo Teixeira, who is both head of the Brazilian organising committee and the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF).

from Reuters Soccer Blog:

Farewell Ronaldo, one of the game’s greats

Ronaldo has just made the official announcement that he is to retire with immediate effect, bringing to an end one of the great soccer stories.

The 34-year-old Brazilian announced his decision at a news conference in Sao Paulo a few moments ago, after concluding that the battle for fitness -- always a bruising struggle -- was one he could no longer win.

I suspect a few people will react by shrugging their shoulders and saying they didn't even know he was still playing but the end of the road for such a great player deserves marking properly, so here's an appreciation by our own Brian Homewood, for many years our correpondent in Rio de Janeiro.

By Brian Homewood

Three times World Player of the Year, twice World Cup winner and overall topscorer in the tournament's history -- not a bad record for a player who suffered three serious knee injuries and was constantly fighting weight problems.

Ronaldo was often mocked for his extra kilos and not  even the country’s president could resist the temptation to have a dig.

During a video conference with the team on the eve of the 2006 World Cup, after Ronaldo had weighed in at 95 kilos for the training camp, then President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva asked: “And what about Ronaldo, is he fat or isn’t he?”

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.

Momentum the key to World Cup success for England’s cricketers

Look away now Australian cricket fans, this one’s going to hurt like a cricket bat to the groin. Their team has carried their abject 2010 form into 2011 by slumping to another defeat to a rampant England side but this time in Twenty20 rather than tests.

While England notched up their eighth straight victory in the shortest version of cricket – a new world record –  the last ball defeat in Adelaide means Australia have now lost 17 of their last 24 completed matches in all forms of the game.

The prospect of an Australian victory at the moment appears as likely as Inzamam-ul-Haq calling for a quick single.

Australia’s major victory in that run was in the Ashes test in Perth against England to level the series at 1-1, before the Australians were destroyed like a quarter-pounder at a burger eating contest by a particularly ravenous contestant.

Three of the matches Australia have won in that time – two in the one-day series in England and one against Sri Lanka in an ODI prior to the Ashes – have come with the series already gone for the once mighty baggy greens.

But if England are to bring home their first 50-over World Cup form the sub-continent in the coming months the team must keep winning in Australia and carry the momentum through to the tournament, meanwhile trampling all over the current holders’ remaining spirit like an errant infant over its parents’ freshly planted tulips.

Australia have bagged the World Cup winners trophy on the last three occasions, and while they remain ranked as the best one-day side in the world, another home one-day series defeat to England, following its pre-Ashes subsidence to Sri Lanka, will surely spell the end of their dominance in the shorter form of the game.

from Reuters Soccer Blog:

FIFA’s World Cup decision day — live

We'll be following all the presentations and the vote itself as FIFA's executive committee decides on the hosts for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Spain/Portugal, Russia, England and Netherlands/Belgium are the four rival bids for 2018, while Australia, South Korea, Qatar, United States and Japan battle it out for 2022, with the vote to come on Thursday.

Follow it all here live...

from Reuters Soccer Blog:

FIFA battens down the hatches as allegations mount

The chill winds of corruption allegations swirling once again around FIFA's Zurich HQ have got world soccer's bosses busy battening down the hatches in the forlorn hope that, if ignored, they will all just blow away.

But if they were to peep out of the windows of their ivory tower overlooking the Swiss financial centre they might see that, in the eyes of much of the world, it is their credibility that is blown and that the process of selecting the hosts of the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals has been seriously tainted.

Allegations aired in a British television documentary by the BBC that three long-standing members of FIFA's executive committee had received bribes from the body's marketing partners ISL and that a FIFA vice-president had ordered World Cup tickets for himself to sell on to touts were bad enough.

Those claims followed hot on the heels of an entrapment operation on FIFA bosses by London's Sunday Times. The newspaper sting resulted in two executive committee members being fined and excluded from office for indicating their willingness to "sell" their votes to the best bidder in Thursday's ballot.

Though FIFA acted in that case, they did so through gritted teeth, complaining loudly about media practices. They then made absolutely no move to investigate the potentially more serious claims produced by the Panorama programme.

In June this year, a Swiss court found that unnamed FIFA officials had taken bribes from FIFA's former and now bankrupt partner ISL.

Only a few weeks ago former FIFA general secretary Michel Zen-Ruffinen claimed to undercover reporters he knew which FIFA executive members were open to bribes for votes. FIFA, one might have thought, has reached its "Salt Lake City moment".

from Reuters Soccer Blog:

A not so happy birthday for Maradona

Diego Maradona is spending his 50th birthday on Saturday far from the two things that have dominated his life -- soccer and being constantly in the public eye.

That leaves Argentina’s greatest player at a crossroads a few short months after a humiliating 4-0 defeat by Germany in the World Cup quarter-finals cost him the job as coach of his beloved Argentina.

Having cheated death more than once and defied doubters to get the job in November 2008, it would be unwise to write off his chances of returning to it one day.

Indeed, former Boca Juniors and Argentina team mate and friend Claudio Caniggia saw him recently and confirmed Maradona was still interested.

“He looked well,” Caniggia said in an interview with the sports daily Ole published on Thursday.

“Obviously, there’s pain. He still hopes for a chance, but he’s well,” said Caniggia, who pointed out that far more experienced coaches have been unable to steer Argentina beyond the last eight since 1990. “Although he doesn’t say so to me, I’m sure inside himself he thinks he deserves to carry on. I think he deserved to.”

The job is, in fact, still open with Maradona’s 1986 World Cup-winning team mate Sergio Batista enjoying a head start as the interim coach and the backing of Argentine Football Association president Julio Grondona.