The Colours of Cricket

Martin Chandler | 6:44am BST 08 August 2021

Published: 2021
Pages: 320
Author: Brown, Philip
Publisher: Pitch
Rating: 4.5 stars

Philip Brown is not the first photographer to have a book published to showcase his work. Patrick Eagar has had several, Mark Ray at least two, and Adrian Murrell and Gordon Brooks one each to my certain knowledge. All of these books contain some remarkable images, but I think possibly that of Australian Brown is the best I have seen so far, and it is certainly a superb production and a credit to publishers Pitch, who have not produced a book like this before, at least not on a cricketing theme.

At the outset of this review I should perhaps admit that Brown’s name did not initially mean very much to me. I had heard of him, but hadn’t realised that he had been taking photographs at cricket matches since 1988. It was useful therefore to read the brief story of his life that occupies, along with a few images of the man himself, the first four pages of the book. There are then many more photos of Brown in the very cleverly done montage of his many press passes that appears on the front endpapers. There is something similar done at the rear with the front pages of books and magazines that Brown’s work graces the covers of. No individual is credited with the design of the book, but whoever it was at Olner Pro Sport Media has done an excellent job.

Which just leaves another 316 pages, which is a very large number of images, although no doubt a drop in the ocean in terms of the number that Brown has taken over the years. A fair number of them are spread over two pages of this large format book, and the others are never more than two to a page. They are arranged in strict chronological order rather than in any thematic way. Almost all are full colour, although for those of us who still enjoy them there are a handful of black and white shots at the front of the book.

Inevitably some of the images in the book are familiar, well known ones, but the majority I have no recollection of seeing before. To each Brown has added a couple of sentences, some of which amount to advice for aspiring photographers, and all of which materially add to his readers enjoyment of what they see. In one or two cases they transform the apparently mundane into something quite stunning. An example comes from the Lord’s Test of the famous 2005 Ashes series. At first glance the image is just of the MCC members at Lord’s gazing skywards. The information that the one cricketer in the image sharing their direction of gaze is Glenn McGrath, and the reason for it is that all are following the trajectory of a Kevin Pietersen six, changes everything.

Naturally in a book such as this there are plenty of images of the play in what I will loosely call ‘big’ matches, many capturing memorable events – one that struck me as particularly poignant was of the precise moment that that Varun Aaron bouncer broke Stuart Broad’s nose and, with the benefit of hindsight, snuffed out the possibly of his developing into a genuine all-rounder. Clearly Broad and Brown know each other well, as it is Broad who provides a generous foreword.

But there is much more that has found its way in front of Brown’s cameras over the years. Like others of his generation he has taken time out to photograph the game in progress in many settings. There are shots of spectators and other non-combatants, as well as the players in unguarded moments. On my first look through the book I was captivated particularly by an image of Ricky Ponting, sat on the Headingley outfield in 2009 with his baby daughter. Later on I was haunted by the sight of a very young and rather lost looking Joe Root during practice in 2013 at a time his form had deserted him.

And I suppose that challenging his reader to look at these images more than momentarily is rather the point. The Colours of Cricket is a ‘coffee table book’ in the best sense of the phrase. The book is rarely going to be looked through in its entirety in one go and, perhaps, part of the reason for that is there are just too many thoughts to be provoked to make a single session read comfortable. For example the third or fourth time I picked up the book was just after the announcement of Ben Stokes’ decision to take a complete break from the game. I hadn’t up until then noticed the photograph that adorns pages 292 and 293. Taken after the climax of that extraordinary match at Headingley during the 2019 Ashes it is certainly a picture that worth a thousand words, and in truth probably many more.

The Colours of Cricket contains many splendid examples of the sporting photographer’s art, and a number that are quite simply stunning. The quality of the reproduction of the images no doubt contributes to why, at £25 a pop, the book is a tad more expensive than the norm. For what you get however it is still a bargain, and highly recommended.