Feeling is the Thing that Happens in 1000th of a Second: the first cricket World Cup and an Ashes Series: LONGLISTED FOR THE WIL

Description

'Exquisite.' - Gideon Haigh 'Magical, a head rush, a marvel.' - Rahul Battacharya 'Startlingly original.' - Matthew Engel In 1975 Patrick Eagar took some photographs which were unlike any cricket photographs anyone had seen before. It was a year when two of the most powerful sides toured England to compete for the first ever World Cup. They were the legendary Australian side that featured the lethal fast bowlers Lillee and Thomson as well as the Chappell brothers, Marsh and Walters. The other visitor was the emerging superpower of the West Indies, captained by Clive Lloyd and included the young Andy Roberts and Viv Richards. From this raw material Eagar found something which is almost magical. As the Guardian celebrated at the time, he 'renders cricket a service as no one else in his field has ever done before'. His pictures show that, 'feeling is the thing that happens in 1000th of a second.' So this is a cricket book about photography and what it can do - tell the future and show human beings in ways not available to our eyes. It is part detective story (and reconstruction of one of the great summers of cricket), part biography and part essay on the power of the image, myth and reality. With 50 black-and-white and 20 colour photographs by Patrick Eager and other great photographers, is it is essential reading for any cricket fan.

Christian Ryan is one of the most stylish and intelligent of writers on the sport today. He was awarded UK Cricket Book of the Year in 2010 for Golden Boy, his book on Kim Hughes's tempestuous period as Captain of the Australian Cricket team.

A brilliant photographer, a brilliant writer - and one of the most startlingly original cricket books ever published - Matthew Engel Christian Ryan is cricket writing's most exquisite miniaturist, capable of revealing whole worlds with a knowing glance. In the peerless Patrick Eagar, he finds his perfect subject - Gideon Haigh Feeling is magical, a head rush, a marvel. It takes one summer many summers ago in the life of a cricket photographer and conjures something timeless and human. The breadth of artistic insight, the exhilarating diversions, connections and epiphanies, the miraculous details, the structural genius - taut and unspooling like John McPhee's Levels of the Game, but wilder - are propelled by an unaccountable suspense. What, you find yourself asking, will this gentle, extraordinary photographer do next? Where will this brilliant, obsessed writer take you next? Can he pull it off? Shouldn't be able to. Does he pull it off? Yes, yes, yes. - Rahul Battacharya, Ondaatje Prize-winning author of Pundits from Pakistan A book of eccentric brilliance - The Saturday Age, Sydney Morning Herald The feeling may happen in that split-second, but the effect is longer lasting. Five Stars. - Inside Sport Ryan has rendered us a new way of seeing cricket photography. - Australian Book Review