Cricket's oldest film

[neville cardus]

I've just applied a motion-interpolation AI to Eadweard Muybridge's 1885/86 cricketing stills, and so rendered them for the first time as a film. These are the oldest moving images of our great game, predating The Roundhay Garden Scene by roughly two years:

Rodney

 

[Daemon]

Why’s he naked tho

 

[BoyBrumby]

Filthy chucker, tbh.

 

[neville cardus]

Filthy chucker, tbh.

Don't know how you can tell at that frame-rate.

What is interesting about his action is how low it is. He was barely a generation removed from the legalisation of overarm bowling.

His batting technique is more remarkable still. Setting aside his stance, there's nothing in the execution of those strokes that would be out of place today.

 

[Red]

Why’s he naked tho

I wanna know the answer to this to.

 

[Red]

Appears the photographer was doing studies of motion so I guess that explains the nakedness.

Could've got the same idea with a pair of y-fronts tbh tho.

 

[the big bambino]

Sneaky way of getting past the porn restrictions on CW.

 

[Line and Length]

Round arm bowling was obviously the norm back then.

 

[neville cardus]

I wanna know the answer to this to.

For the same reason there are so many nudes in classical and renaissance sculpture, with both of which the Victorians were preoccupied. When you're studying the motions and sinews and ossa of the body, clothing is an obstacle.

 

[Line and Length]

For the same reason there are so many nudes in classical and renaissance sculpture, with both of which the Victorians were preoccupied. When you're studying the motions and sinews and ossa of the body, clothing is an obstacle.

Very true. I have noticed this in a number of illustrated books - perfectly tasteful and in no way intending to be ******.

 

[The Hutt Rec]

Amazing how things have developed since then ... cricketers are usually fully clothed when playing now.

 

[Smudge]

Gives new meaning to the phrase "nude offies".

 

[Daemon]