© Philip Brown

The photographs of India wicketkeeper Dinesh Karthik diving and stumping England’s Michael Vaughan were taken on September 5, 2004 at Lord’s during a one-day series.

The shots were taken with a Canon body with a 500mm lens and a 1.4 teleconverter. I had in 2004 changed to Canon equipment as I believed Canon had overtaken Nikon with their range of digital cameras. In 2008 Nikon overtook Canon again and I changed back. Both very expensive decisions for me! Anyway Nikon and Canon both make great cameras and lenses while both charge thousands of pounds for most items. I would estimate that well over 99% of professional photographers who turn up at sporting events use one of these two brands. I still question how a 600mm telephoto lens, which is basically just some metal and some glass can cost the same as a brand new car. Answers on a post card please. (No, I’m not going to be diverted again and explain what a post card is.)

Photographers are very well treated at Lord’s and normally have a large choice of positions from where they can photograph major matches. Usually I sit at the Nursery End of the ground underneath the media centre but occasionally I may choose one of two positions beside the famous Lord’s pavilion.

On this day I chose to sit in the gap between the pavilion and the Warner stand. There were quite a few good photographs to be had that day if I remember correctly. In the 44th over of England’s chase of 205 Ashley Giles was caught and bowled by Harbhajan Singh. A couple of photographers near me “downed tools”, picked up their laptops and started to load and caption images of that wicket and celebration.

Photographers really should be able to transmit their cricket pictures without missing a single ball. That’s one reason why I prefer to use a tripod that holds the lens and camera in place in front of me even when I’m busy on a laptop. I can lean forward as every ball is bowled and I’m ready to capture any incident that may take place. A lot of photographers who use a monopod will put their camera/lens/monopod down on the ground and start working on their laptop. If something happens they’ll need a few seconds to pick up their equipment.

Anyway, five balls after Giles was dismissed… oh, hang on a minute. I know this has nothing to do with anything, but really like the story about the Warwickshire club shop ordering some “Ashley Giles, King of Spin” drinking mugs. When the mugs were unpacked it was obvious that the printer had blundered as they actually had “Ashley Giles, King of Spain” on them. Sorry about that, I’m back.

© Philip Brown

As I was saying, exactly five balls after Giles was caught, Harbhajan bowled a very wide ball down the leg side and Vaughan left his crease, wafted his bat at the ball and had to turn around and quickly attempt to get back into his ground. Karthik impressively collected the ball and stretched for the stumps, managing to dislodge the bails just before Vaughan got his bat back over the line. There was a brief delay before the third umpire confirmed that Vaughan was out.

Now the thing is that this photograph would have been fairly worthless if Vaughan had made it back into his crease but as he was dismissed it really summed up the match and India’s victory.

A friend of mine and fellow photographer David Davies, who was shooting from the Nursery End of the ground also captured the very same moment. He is known around the globe as “Wavy Davy”. I’ve known him 20 years but never bothered to ask why. It’s an odd nickname come to think of it. I’ll ask him about it next time I see him.

The point is it is most unusual for a moment like this to make a good picture for two photographers sitting at basically opposite ends of the ground. “Wavy” can in fact be seen in my photograph as a higher bail is right in line with him.

I was quite lucky to get the shot as I was shooting landscape at that time rather than upright. No matter how skilful you might be you have to have a little luck to capture your share of good photos. I do remember a bit of a scramble as some of the photographers who had “downed tools” rushed over demanding to view the stumping photographs that they had missed. They weren’t happy when they saw the sequence. In the sequence there is an obvious frame that stands out as the best one to send. I’ve included the sequence just to illustrate how many pictures can be captured in a short space of time. The Canon camera body I used that day took approximately 5 or 6 frames a second. That was nearly eight years ago, cameras have moved on at pace and my most recent camera body, a Nikon D4 takes about eleven frames a second.

It was Karthik’s first match for India. What a way to start a career. He was just 19 and apparently inspired the number one hit song by Paul Hardcastle.


Canon EOS – 1D MkII; Canon 500mm f4 lens; 1.4 teleconverter
ISO 250; Aperture 6.3; 1/1000th

© Philip Brown

Hello, my name is Philip Brown (please call me Philip), and I’ve been photographing cricket for a long time, well about 25 years, in fact. I’m really pleased that I’ve been asked to share some of my cricket images with you in Shot Selection in the coming months.

I first photographed cricket in Australia before I moved to England in 1989. I received a lesson in covering cricket when I was sent to my first Test match at the SCG in 1988. Chris Broad (Stuart’s father) scored a century (139) but “lost it” after he was dismissed by Steve Waugh. He knocked over his stumps with his bat before leaving the field. I missed the photo, but the doyen of cricket photography, Patrick Eagar, a lovely bloke, captured this moment perfectly and was welcomed with open arms by my newspaper’s picture editor back in the office. Patrick’s images graced the pages of Sydney’s Sunday Telegraph the following day. Lesson learnt, concentrate Philip!

This black-and-white image is from June 1989. I was covering the Ashes tour for newspapers back in Australia (including the Sunday Telegraph who must have forgiven my earlier incompetence). The tour started in early May and the Aussie team didn’t leave the UK until the end of August so it was a long trip.

The second Test match against England was played at Lord’s, and on the Saturday I spotted the then-Australian prime minister Bob Hawke watching proceedings from one of the tavern boxes.

Later, I saw him and his entourage leave the box so I raced down the stairs from my perch in the hope that I could get a photograph of Mr Hawke. I caught up with this group just as they entered the back door of the Lord’s pavilion. I thought my best tactic was to march in with them as if I was part of this esteemed group. Before long we were all in the Australian dressing room while the Test match continued outside. Soon the prime minister was sitting out on the balcony with some of the players, and I moved out on to this very small balcony to take some photographs. Allan Border was padded up so I assume that he may have been the next man in.

AB appears nervous in the photo, but I think he was nervous about what Dean Jones would say to the PM rather than at having to bat against Foster, Dilley and Jarvis. I was bloody nervous too, imagining I would be “collared” and thrown out of the pavilion, and possibly the ground, at any moment.

The next day I remember there was a shot of the balcony featuring Hawke, the players and me on the front page of a UK national paper taken from about a hundred yards away so I was extremely confident that my exclusive “close-up” version would do well in the papers back in Australia. I didn’t have to wait too long and saw the main Sydney paper the next time I visited the office – there was my photo, very small, on page 26. Page 26! Were they kidding? Page 26! It was about the size of a postage stamp.

I still really like the photo. I can’t imagine any prime minister marching in to a dressing room and plonking himself down next to the captain for a chat during a Test match these days. Can you?

I don’t have the exact details of this photo but I’m fairly sure that it was taken on a Nikon F3 (or an FE2) with a 50mm lens, probably taken at 1/500th of a second.

I sent a large print to Bob Hawke in Australia after the tour had finished and got a nice letter back. Now where is that letter?

© Getty Images

It's been too long since my last blog - not as much cricket in my working life for a while - but I'm back again.

For my first blog in a long time, I've picked a photo from the end of the 2010-11 Ashes. As an Aussie photographer, particularly during the final Ashes Test in Sydney, I had a lot of time to think about the fact that Andrew Strauss and the England team would, during the post-series presentation, be celebrating on the podium as the Australians looked on.

I wanted to try and sum that up in one photo. Video, as opposed to a still photo, can change focus or pan from one subject to another to show two different subjects over a few seconds of footage. There is always the opportunity to show winners and losers in two separate photos, but I was hoping for one photo that told the whole story.

Normally, for these presentations, the standard position to shoot from is head on, looking straight at the winning team to capture the celebrations straight down the barrel of the lens. The losing team normally stands to one side. I was fortunate as I had a few Getty Images colleagues with me, a couple of them were shooting the 'straight' shot, giving me the freedom to try something different.

My first thought was a photo that had England celebrating, with some glum Aussie cricketers’ faces looking on. I quickly went off this idea. To see Aussie faces, it would mean looking across the England players, with the Aussies in the background. Because of the distance between the teams, focussing on England would mean the Aussies would be a long way out of focus in the background, and not recognisable. Focussing on the Aussies would most likely leave the England team a blurry mess in the foreground.

The baggy green is an iconic symbol of the Australian team, so I thought if I shot from behind them, looking across to England, that even if they were a little out of focus, the players in the baggy greens would clearly be the Aussie team. I also figured, given the England players would be celebrating, arms in the air and cheering, and the Aussies would be standing and just watching, even from behind, that there would be enough contrast between the teams to tell the story.

Of course, all this planning is great in theory, but until the teams are out there and in position, I couldn't be sure of all the angles and distances to see if it would work. As the presentations started, the first problem I came across was that the platform the England players were going to be on wasn't very high. I was going to be completely blocked by the Aussie heads. Luckily there was a drinks cooler on the field near by, so I grabbed that and dragged it over to stand on and get a slightly higher angle.

The other issue was that the Aussie players weren't standing still. I wanted a few baggy greens to look across from, so it required a bit of fine-tuning of my drinks-cooler position as they moved about. As the actual presentation took place some officials on the field moved right into the way, but luckily, after a yelped plea from me, they moved to one side and I was able to shoot my picture.

This was shot on a Canon 1D Mark IV with a 2.8, 70-200mm lens. The shutter speed was 1/800th of a second at an aperture of f5.6. I closed the aperture a little in order to prevent the Aussies in the foreground from being too far out of focus.