Random Cricket Photos Post 127


#RandomCricketPhotosThatMakeMeHappy

There have been few cricketers as eccentric as Jack Russell. While that's a well-known fact, another fact is that there have been few men as multi-talented as the former English wicketkeeper. Both the facts are well captured here in this photograph from 1996.

As England stumbled from one disappointment to another in the sub-continent in their World Cup campaign, here was their wicketkeeper taking his mind off from those disappointments doing what he discovered a love for almost a decade back in the same country.

While he had already begun wielding the paintbrush, it was in 1987 that he got into it when he travelled to Pakistan as a reserve wicket-keeper to Bruce French. With just two and a half days of cricket for him from two months of the tour, he had a lot of time to hone his skills by making the myriad views of Pakistan his muse.

He went back and put his 40 pieces of art on exhibition. In two days, they had flown off the walls. And, with that, the post retirement plan had taken off as well.

No wonder that during England's not so ideal tour to the subcontinent in 1996, Russell once again managed to squeeze some time out to paint in the streets of Peshawar, finding in an orange seller his muse.

Photo by Chris Turvey

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