22 May 2012

The Promise of Youth


The First Cricket Test between England and the West Indies has just concluded, with a win for England.  (After, it must be said, a bit of a "wobble" ! )

Stuart Broad took 11 wickets for 145 runs in the match..  a splendid achievement.   Comparisons have been made with Ian Botham's "Eleven-fer.." feat in 1978; - 11 for 140 to be precise.  Which is my excuse to trot out this photo I took of Ian Botham at Lord's in that very match.

I used a Russian MTO mirror 1000mm lens, with a Practica Super TL camera, rigged up on a home-made rifle mount.  The photo was taken on Ilford FP3 and all the processing was done with my own fair hands.

By late Saturday afternoon, when this photo was taken, New Zealand had been "skittled" to end the day at 37 for 7, a position they did not recover from.  I remember a forlorn Mark Burgess (the NZ Captain) trudging back into the shadows of the pavilion.



England's highest wicket taker was just at the beginning of his Test Match career and, in a way, that summer marked  a "beginning" for me too.

I had just received an appointment letter to join the Royal Hong Kong Police, and 1978 was my last full summer in the United Kingdom. Aged 22, I flew out to Hong Kong a few weeks after this photo was taken.

But I'll never forget Ian Botham - in full of a packed house at Lord's - showing the kind of irresistible bowling form that was to define his career.  It's nice to see a brief echo of it in the performance of Stuart Broad this week.





6 comments:

  1. Excellent phoo, John. The action doesn't look too orthodox but at least he had a better run up than Ken Higgs.

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    1. Everyone had a better run-up than Ken Higgs - apart from J.S.E. Price of Middlesex !

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  2. Wow, Beefy in his prime before the wine and injuries turned him into a fat pie chucker.

    So you worked in Hong Kong for 20 odd years before the handover? And you stayed on, I didn't know that. Interesting stuff.

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    1. Stu, HK has many people who "Came for three years, and stayed for thirty" - I'm one of them ! :-)

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  3. What an excellent photograph! -Better than mine at the Gabba in the early 80s. I don't even remember the year....was it '82? Hmmn, I think I saw him there a couple of times for test and a one dayer. maybe the one dayer was a few years later...You've got me going now, ...blah, blah. Was there a spinner called Hemmings? I came to Japan window shopping for cameras in 2000.

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    1. Hi Russell, Yes Eddie Hemmings got a few international games in the early 80s, as I recall. A Brummie, big hero at Edgbaston..

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