Dual 101
Tuesday October 15, 1991. FAI Cup Pool game between New South Wales and Vitoria at North Sydney Oval. At the time I was studying at TAFE, being a Tuesday in October I assume from memory I either skipped class or was either in the middle of or had completed exams – either way, the cricket was the most appealing thing for the day.
In checking details for this, CricInfo lists the crowd on this day as 3,800, which I suspect for any domestic game, especially midweek, was a great crowd. I cannot remember the oval as being overly busy, I had free range and roam of the field for taking photos – except for the allocated members stand which also acted as the players enclosure.
What stands out when looking at this game, was the number of high profile international players that were playing – Steve Small, Mark Taylor, both Waugh brothers, Michael Beavan, Greg Matthews, Trevor Bayliss, Phil Emery, Geoff Lawson, Mike Whitney and Wayne Holdsworth for NSW – all would end up playing for Australia at some point in some form of the game.
The Victorian team on this day was just as stacked, Wayne Phillips and Darrin Ramshaw opened, followed by Dean Jones and Darren Lehmann, Simon O’Donnell and Geoff Allardice, Merv Hughes, Tony Dodemaide, Paul Reiffel, Damien Fleming and Paul Jackson. Ramshaw and Allardice the only two players not to play for Australia. No wonder there was nearly 4000 people there!
NSW started slowly losing Small and Taylor for 0 and 1 each. That had Mark and Steve Waugh batting at 2/9 !
I’m taking photos on film obviously, and in hindsight, I only shot 1 roll – so 36 pics, as a result action pictures were not going to be the easy to take.
The majority of the NSW innings, I was sitting at third man, on the fence – this was before the use of ropes for boundaries were the norm, and as such I was in ear shot to Merv Hughes and to a lesser extent Tony Dodemaide – but 20 year old me barely said a word to either of them, or Mike Whitney and Geoff Lawson when NSW bowled – stupid hey !
Mark and Steve Waugh put on a batting clinic and raced each other to 100 – camera in hand I for some reason did not even think to try and capture their century scoring shots. Luckily though I did capture the title photo for this blog – that of the scoreboard with them both on 101.
I knew on the day that Id caught the moment, a simple photo of the scoreboard, “even I couldn’t stuff that picture up !!!”, I said way too early… It wasn’t until Id gotten the roll developed and saw the picture – it was everything I expected and more – I hadn’t notice old mate standing there, shirt off and his terry towelling bucket hat on ! No matter how I look at it even to this day, I cannot do the overall picture any justice by trying to edit him out – cropping the picture destroys the composure of the old scoreboard, the old security fence keeping people out – in this instance ensures he is kept in !
I’m not sure how many times the Waugh brothers scored joint centuries, I would expect the times they scored them as equally, Dual 101, would be less common, probably the only instance – luckily, I captured it. Rest assured, the other pictures I took that day are nowhere near as exciting or noteworthy as this one picture – old mate and all !!!
That being said, when I decided to do this article, specifically on a varied sport other than Rugby League, this was the obvious cricket photo to use. Part of that is the difficulty in getting a quality photo at the cricket – you can’t easily predict a wicket or a slashing boundary shot. The action is all (or typically all) in the centre of the ground meaning it’s just hard to do ! Couple that with 36 photos only on film – it’s much easier these days when I can shoot 1000+ pictures at a game digitally.
The ends justify the means, or more so the good photo masks all the bad ones ! I’ve touched on this a couple of times, but shooting on film was such a risk – especially for a student who couldn’t develop his own work, so it directly impacted my old velcro wallet and keycard !!!
Stepping back from that game, I often find myself taking scoreboard photos now, if for no other reason as a record for the game or event just watched. North Sydney Oval for cricket, and Leichhardt Oval for league still have the old style manned scoreboard, suburban history stuck in that old glory days history.
Even Lidcombe Oval, used by the Western Suburbs Magpies in the Reserve Grade competition has upgraded to a digital scoreboard, granted it’s not state of the art but gone is the club stalwart changing the plates with every score.
The challenge in a digital today, is quality over quantity, or more so a higher percentage of quality. Shooting 1000 photos an event is fine, the challenge is getting as close as possible to 100% of those 1000 photos being of a high enough standard that I would be happy to share on the various social media outlets, and this website. No one wants to see missing heads or blurry subjects. What they want, and what I want to capture is that wow moment, that one instant in time that tells a story, that I can write about and share and be proud of ! If that image is an easy capture like a scoreboard, all the better for me, if I have to work for a picture or a capture so be it ! As a photographer I am constantly looking to improve not only my camera skills but also my sight and reading of the action skills to get that shot!
