MARK RAY Cricket: A portrait of the game. Reviewed by Bernard Whimpress

Mark Ray’s third book of cricket photography captures in black and white the majesty of the game in its quieter moments.

Top-level cricket in the modern era is all about crash, dash, flash and colour, all delivered at a fast pace. Twenty20 sets the tone with thrilling fielding and improvised shot-making, dragging ODIs and Test matches along with it – all except for over rates, which in the long form of the game are delivered at abysmally low levels.

Ray certainly knows cricket. A New South Wales and Tasmanian representative as an opening batsman and left-arm spin bowler, he began working for the Launceston Examiner as a photographer while still playing, and before becoming a cricket journalist with the Melbourne Herald and the Fairfax newspaper group.

In his introduction to Cricket: A portrait of the game, Ray writes that as a photographer, action didn’t excite him:

The Tasmanian dressing room was where I could indulge my interest in what goes on behind the scenes. My appreciation for the photography of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Walker Evans, André Kertész, Dorothea Lange and the great Robert Frank encouraged me to capture that world. And because I was doing this as an ‘amateur’, with no agenda or deadlines set by a newspaper, I could photograph scenes and moments that the press photographers didn’t see or ignored. Quite often, those photographers would say to me: ‘Still shooting black and white?’ When I’d nod they’d shake their heads and grumble: ‘I’d love to be doing that.’

He had total access to the Tasmanian dressing room and was able to pursue his form of photography while working as a journalist. What he also developed was the trust of players, officials and, particularly, three Australian captains – Allan Border, Mark Taylor and Steve Waugh.

Ray’s first photographic book, Cricket: The game behind the game (1994) documented Australian cricket and was structured around the categories of Heroes, Practice, The Fans, Backstage and Stories, whereas his second, Cricket Masala (2002), was organised geographically according to countries: Australia, England, India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Cricket: A portrait follows the geographical structure (with the addition of South Africa) but is much expanded to include 246 images spread across 287 pages.

The first two books received praise, but Ray felt his body of work from 1982 to 2002 was unfinished and only the sale of his archive to an English photographic agency in 2023, which brought with it agreement to produce a ‘career’ book, prompted thoughts of a fresh publication.

While many pictures from the first two books gain fresh exposure, 95 are published for the first time, and many photographs are afforded increased space. Readers will have their favourite images and it’s likely that the 20-page photo-essay devoted to Shane Warne will be a highlight, although for me it’s another essay of eight pages on beach cricket in the Indian port city of Visakhapatnam in 2001 that wins top spot. Of this experience, Ray writes:

That morning I’d run into the excellent News Ltd photographer Phil Hillyard and we’d decided to head off together. I’ve always thought photography is a solo exercise but … on this free day, Phil ditched all the heavy gear he needed at matches, and just carried a small camera (film not digital) and a couple of lenses.

We took a taxi to one of Vizag’s beaches and walked into a nearby area of laneways and crowded houses. Without a word between us we quickly adopted a working method. While one of us accepted the enthusiastic attention of the locals, the other would work on more candid photos. After a little while we’d instinctively swap roles.

When we came across a dozen boys and girls playing cricket in a concrete courtyard outside a house, Phil accepted the offer of a bat. While he hit them in the middle I turned and saw two boys sitting on a staircase a few metres away as if they took cricket far more seriously than the others. Their serene self-confidence shone through.

It’s a shot Cartier-Bresson would’ve been proud to have taken.

Cricket’s superstars – Warne, Border, Ponting, Lara, Botham, Gilchrist, Richards, the Waughs, Ambrose, Marshall, Imran, Donald and Wasim – are well represented, often in a state of repose, but this book presents a multi-faceted story, as Ray remarks:

My hope is that it will be seen as both a record of the game as it was and as a reminder that, despite the manic pace of development in the 21st century, many aspects of cricket defy change. The best players still sweat and fret, and girls and boys, women and men, still play the game for fun or simply watch it.

The power of the book lies in its images, and these are well-contextualised, often with extensive captions and superb essays both by Ray and Gideon Haigh, who has responded to a number of his favourite pictures. Michael Atherton has also provided a perspicacious foreword in which he notes that photographers ‘need to blend into the background, and disappear from view, to catch people behaving naturally rather than showily before the camera’.

Mark Ray might have been well enough known to gain access to, and the trust of, players, but like Annie Leibovitz, following her documenting of a Rolling Stones tour in 1975, he possessed the vanishing quality necessary to capture astonishing informal photos.

Cricket: A portrait of the game is much more than a book of cricket photography. Mark Ray is an outstanding photographer whose subject just happens to be cricket.

Mark Ray Cricket: A portrait of the game Hardie Grant 2024 HB 288pp $70

Bernard Whimpress is a historian who usually writes on sport. His most recent book is Rushed Behinds: Writings on Australian football available from www.lulu.com/spotlight/bernardwhimpress

You can buy Cricket: A portrait of the game from Abbey’s at a 10% discount by quoting the promotion code NEWTOWNREVIEW.

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Tags: Australian cricket team, cricket in India, cricket photography, Gideon | Haigh, Mark | Ray, Michael | Atherton, photography, sport photography