Cricket Impressions by Adrian Murrell

Cricket Impressions by Adrian Murrell came out first in 1987. It makes no sense for me to review it after 32 years. And that’s why I wouldn’t undertake that exercise. What I would do instead is express my feelings about it, just as I did with ‘Feeling’ (here https://justanoccasionalwriter.blogspot.com/2019/11/feelings-on-christian-ryans-feeling.html).

The only reason I bought this book in the first place was because of my recent dive into the world of cricket pictures thanks to this Facebook page that I handle called Random Cricket Photos That Make Me Happy. The idea isn’t to rip off photos from the books to the page. The idea is to find photos that actually have a story behind it. Strangely, in this journey, I have also become increasingly intrigued by the men behind the lens. And that’s how I reached this book.

One doesn’t need to sift through the pages to understand how outdated the book is. In fact, the cover itself telegrams that to you. On the cover page is the photo of David Lawrence bowling. A lot of you might not even recognize him from his name. That’s because Lawrence was that talented but unfortunate man from cricket whose body broke down when he seemed to be on the verge of greatness. He was a big thing in 1986-87, terrorizing batsmen in English County with his Gloucestershire partner Courtney Walsh. And then only in his fifth Test, his kneecap broke in the middle of his bowling action to end his flight at the top level. But Lawrence, years away from the misfortune that would befall him, sits pretty on the cover of Murrell’s book as one of the photographer’s many subjects on the cricket field.

The book contains some of Murrell’s best captures from the time he started going on international tours (his first was in India in 1976-77) to 1986 when the book was written. Like Feeling, it doesn’t begin with an index but unlike Feeling, it’s written by Murrell himself.

And the photographer talks photography, much of which would sound alien to us exposed to the world of digital cameras. Interestingly though, that’s what I realised makes this book so special in some ways. It helps you gain perspective of how far we have come from Murrell’s times and how much easier it has become for his successors. Writing about a colour photo of Ian Botham posing alongside some twenty-odd Pakistani villagers, Murrell writes “If you are using black and white you can usually get some decent shots even in fairly grim weather, but anything taken in color in poor light will just look dingy.” While that’s not completely untrue even now, the advances made in photography would definitely save the day for a 21^st-century photographer.

But there is more to photography beyond the technical aspects that the photographer wants to talk about. And that’s the juice of Cricket Impressions. I believe that’s the juice of every such book. Just think about it. You capture something remarkable. It becomes public in an instant. And they are looking at your captured photograph all over the world.  But are they listening to you who captured it? No. Photographs don’t speak and that’s how photographers are left with that extra story to every photograph that doesn’t often come out. Murrell voices those stories in these pages.

Sample this. A photograph of Michael Holding throwing down the ball to a waiting batsman taken from behind the keeper might just appear an ordinary photo to most.

However, when you read Murrell’s version of it, you look at it absolutely differently. This was the first floodlit game played in England and Murrell admits wanting to capture all the unusual features of it – the white ball, the black sightscreen, the colored clothing and umpire’s black shirt all in one frame. The most important part, however, as he reveals, is that he wanted it all to be taken in the backdrop of CRICKET written in large letters.

The book then moves to pictures of Murrell that got the fame they deserved as he puts them alongside the news piece in which they appeared. And a cursory glance through them makes you realize how unacknowledged is the cricket photographer. We all have seen the photo of Chappell throwing Denniss Lillee’s aluminum bat in anger as Mike Brearley looks on. We also remember the mug shot of John Lever with the infamous Gauze Strip from the Madras Test of 1976 which caused quite a stir when Indians accused the bowler of using Vaseline to swing the ball. And that Botham photo reflecting on the Headingley century of 1981 with a cigarette between his lips. And how many of us knew the man who took them was Murrell?

In the following pages, Murrell also reveals his admiration for the man whose rise coincided with Murrell’s journeys with the English team - Ian Botham. The admiration comes out in the form of Botham pictured doing almost everything and in possibly every mood. He writes, “Sometimes, Test Matches can be photographically boring when Botham isn’t playing. When he is playing, suddenly it becomes photographically exciting. Somehow he makes pictures.” My personal favorite is his juxtaposition of two photographs – one of Botham at the receiving end of a vicious bouncer from Geoff Lawson from the 81 Headingley Test and the other showing Botham giving it back to Lawson in 1985 on the same ground.

In my opinion, this particular juxtaposition gives you a peep into Murrell’s cricketing sense that possibly put him a notch above his contemporaries along with the best.

My favorite bit of the book, however, was the juxtaposition that Murrell does of people’s perception of cricket photographers’ job with his own experience of being one. He hits back at people thinking he has a great job which requires him to sit around and drink beer while watching cricket by saying, “I do have a lovely job, but there’s not much sitting around. You can have two or three over when nothing much happens, but you have to be ready all the time for when something does happen. And when it does, your reaction must be as sharp as the batsman’s.”

One also gets a taste of Murrell’s cricketing sense when, in one of the later pages, he goes on to juxtapose this with a professional cricketer’s career. Alongside pictures of Graeme Fowler ducking and weaving, Murrell tells the tale of the spectacular rise and the dramatic fall of the former English opener within the space of the 12 months of 1985. He concludes by saying, As with cricket photographers, the public is apt to say of cricketers ‘Oh, what a lovely job’ – and yet is it? It is a sobering thought that what starts as a hobby at which a young boy excels may later become an almost insupportable pressure, sapping confidence and eroding pleasure.” The weight of the words only grow on you as you read them in the light of Fowler’s recent revelations of hard-fought battles with mental health.

After reading something this beautiful, you naturally scrounge the book for more of such insights. Does one find more of it? Well, after revealing so much about it, I would at least keep that a secret.