Jumping Out for a Straight Drive is a black-and-white photograph of the cricketer Victor Trumper taken by the photographer George Beldam in May 1905. It is among the most famous and well-recognised photographs in cricket.
Background edit
Representation of cricket in the 19th century edit
Since the early 19th century, artists had attempted to capture cricketers and cricket matches. A series of watercolour sketches by George Shepheard made on a 28cm by 33cm notebook page, depicting action poses of famous late-18th century cricketers, are the earliest known pictures of an actual cricket match.[1][2] However, the difficulties of effectively capturing action and movement caused artists to limit the painting of cricketers;[2] they tended to form part of the scenery or to be a backdrop to a landscape where the focus is on the scenery,[3] or for the artist to focus on the crowd. The most famous print was A Cricket Match between the Counties of Sussex and Kent, at Brighton (1849), painted by W. Drummond and C. J. Basebe, and distributed by W. H. Mason, a cricketer and publisher. The match depicted never in fact took place, and the focus was on the characters rather than the action.[4][5] Nevertheless, the image was widely emulated for many years, including in Australia.[6] In 1887, when international cricket between England and Australia had been established for ten years,[7] the artists Sir Robert Ponsonby Staples and George Hamilton Barrable, completed a large painting, The Imaginary Cricket Match: England v Australia, which still hangs in the Writing Room at Lord's Cricket Ground. Inspired by A Cricket Match between the Counties of Sussex and Kent, at Brighton, it depicts a cricket match attended by many famous people and notable colonial figures. However, the focus on the action on the pitch is much greater than in the previous work and the players are painted in more realistic action poses.[8]
Some artists tried to achieve the effect of movement by drawing the moment when the direction of movement changed—such as the moment that a batsman reached the height of his swing before bringing the bat down. One such artist, George Frederic Watts, a teenager at the time, worked with the cricketer Nicholas Wanostrotch ("Felix"), to illustrate Felix on the Bat in 1845, a book which was both a coaching manual and a scientific study of batting. Watts' images became famous and were widely used and imitated up to the turn of the century.[9] However, most respected artists avoided painting images of sport or recreation, considering these to be less worthy subjects than history or the Classical stories.[10]
Developments in photography presented a different means of recording cricketers.[11] The first photographs were taken using glass plates to record the image;[12] they required a relatively long exposure time of around ten seconds and had a complicated developing procedure. This, and the inability to get close enough to the action or to zoom in with appropriate lenses, meant that close-up action shots were impossible, and "action" cricket photographs were usually posed for the camera.[11][13] The earliest known cricket photograph was taken in 1857 by Roger Fenton who had taken many photographs of the Crimean War and upon his return took a series of pictures of landscapes and landmarks around Britain. Although he generally did not photograph recreational activities, Fenton captured images of the Royal Artillery Cricket Club playing a match against Hunsdonbury Cricket Club at the Artillery Ground in Islington; he may have known some of the players involved from his time in the Crimea, or he may simply have wanted to capture a landscape with the cricket incidental. The shot would have been carefully posed but was designed to simulate action with the players engaged in a match.[11] In Australia, photography was treated less as an elite art form and more as a way to generate income by selling copies. Cricketers were widely photographed, and the first image of an Australian match, posed like that of Fenton, was taken in 1860 by Barnett Johnstone.[14] By 1861, the first English cricket team to tour Australia was extensively photographed and some of the images were published in England.[15] By the early 1900s, photographic technology remained limited and the only way for the public to see non-posed "action" scenes from cricket matches came when newspapers printed sketches provided by artists such as Frank Gillett, Ernest Prater and S. T. Dadd, artists who were paid to provide sketches of news events for which no photographs were available.[16]
Victor Trumper edit
Victor Trumper was born in Sydney, around 1877,[notes 1][17] and despite not scoring heavily in his early years in cricket, impressed many judges with the way he played. A last minute choice to tour England with the Australian team in 1899,[18] he was the third highest run scorer in the team, but made a greater impression both with the pace and style of his scoring—in contrast with the rest of the team, who won the Test series 1–0 but were criticised for slow, joyless cricket—and with his personal qualities.[notes 2][20] When Trumper and the Australians returned to England in 1902, he had one of the most successful and revered seasons in the history of cricket, dominating the summer and scoring over 2,000 first-class runs, setting a record for an Australian in England, scoring more runs than anyone else, English or Australian, in the season and finishing second in the batting averages. Critics rated his achievements even higher owing to the very difficult batting conditions of the 1902 season, brought about by frequent rain which damaged the pitches on which teams played.[21] The review of the tour in Wisden Cricketers' Almanack speculated if anyone had batted better "since W. G. Grace was at his best" around thirty years before. The review stated: "Trumper stood alone among the batsmen of the season, not only far surpassing his own colleagues, but also putting into the shade everyone who played for England ... Pages might be written about Trumper"s batting without exhausting the subject."[22] Many analysts could not to describe Trumper's style or explain his success, and cricket reporting of the time did not describe technique or analyse how batsmen played.[23]
George Beldam edit
Developments in action photography edit
Notes and references edit
Notes edit
- ^ There is some doubt about Trumper's precise birthdate, and who his parents were.[17]
- ^ One of the Australians in the team, Frank Laver, took around 100 photographs of the trip, even though several of his teammates usually disliked being photographed. The team were also filmed on at least two occasions.[19]
References edit
- ^ Arlott, p. 615.
- ^ a b Haigh, pp. 2–3
- ^ Arlott, p. 614.
- ^ Haigh, p. 3.
- ^ Arlott, pp. 615–616.
- ^ Haigh, p. 3, 15.
- ^ Haigh, pp. 22–31.
- ^ Haigh, pp. 31–33.
- ^ Haigh, pp. 4–7.
- ^ Smart, Alastair (20 July 2013). "The art of cricket: Enough to leave you stumped". The Telegraph. Retrieved 22 February 2017.
- ^ a b c Haigh, pp. 9–11.
- ^ Eager, p. 642.
- ^ Eager, pp. 642–643.
- ^ Haigh, p. 16.
- ^ Haigh, pp. 8, 14–16.
- ^ Haigh, p. 68.
- ^ a b Haigh, pp. 35–36.
- ^ Haigh, p. 55.
- ^ Haigh, pp. 60–61.
- ^ Haigh, pp. 57–59.
- ^ Haigh, pp. 66–67.
- ^ "The Australians in England 1902". Wisden Cricketers' Almanack. London: John Wisden & Co. 1903. Retrieved 24 February 2017.
- ^ Haigh, pp. 68–71.
Bibliography edit
- Arlott, John (1986). "A Cricket Treasury: Art". In Swanton, E. W.; Plumptre, George; Woodcock, John (eds.). Barclay's World of Cricket (3rd ed.). London: Willow Books in association with Barclays Bank PLC. pp. 614–618. ISBN 0-00-218193-2.
- Eager, Patrick (1986). "A Cricket Treasury: Cricket Photography". In Swanton, E. W.; Plumptre, George; Woodcock, John (eds.). Barclay's World of Cricket (3rd ed.). London: Willow Books in association with Barclays Bank PLC. pp. 642–643. ISBN 0-00-218193-2.