Feeling is the Thing that Happens in 1000th of a Second by Christian Ryan (Book Review)

Most cricket books can probably be squeezed into one broad category or another but there are few that simply refuse to be pigeon-holed, Beyond a Boundary is an obvious example. Feeling is one of those outliers.

Christian Ryan doesn't search for any deeper meaning to the game or attempt to place it in a wider context. Instead he presents it from an entirely fresh perspective, a new light if you will, without flash or airbrush, where cloud cover doesn't affect swing but the colour, or lack of, of the image before us. Through months of conversations, Ryan disects a year of photography, the Ashes summer of 1975, by the outstanding Patrick Eager, the foremost cricketing photographer of his and perhaps any era.

I was first introduced to Eager's work at a young age through his collaborations with Alan Ross, pictorial accounts of eight international summers, seven English, one Australian. Through Eager's effortlessly atmospheric snaps and through Ross, the poet, with his  smooth, Bordeaux-rich prose, I became intoxicated with the game without even realising how. Flicking back through those pages again now, the reasons are clear.

Ryan has a different style to Ross, his is sharp and fresh, like a Chablis - you probably couldn't drink a lot of it, but every mouthful is worth savouring. And his approach here is simple enough: allow Eager to explain his process - the science, the technique, the gear; then show the reader, and remind the artist, of the art within.

Eager, in keeping with many at the pinnacle of their fields is reluctant to assign design to his most successful images with perhaps the exception his most famous one, that of Jeff Thomson, that envelops the front and back covers. He continually refers to luck as his greatest ally - just repeated cases of being in the right place at the right time. Ryan gently disuades him of such unjustified modesty. 

In fact it is unfair to say that Ryan doesn't look for deeper meaning and wider context, he does, but at the macro level. He forensically analyses each photo, diligently researches the stories behind them and gently jogs Eager's memory for the inside story as he goes. He also adds just enough details on the man and teases out sufficient personal reminicences to fill out the artist's character without the book ever feeling autobiographical or indeed biographical. It is a thin line, expertly trod.
 
Eager's success rate seems particularly remarkable given the technical limitations of the era. Most of the time he had one shot at getting the perfect image and then would have to wait until the following day to know whether he got it. Again this is where his plead of 'luck' falls flat, only an intimate knowledge not just of light, angles etc but of the game, the grounds and the players themselves could produce such gems so regularly.

My biggest gripe and it was an immediate one, was the size of the book itself. I had assumed a book centred around a selection of photographs, and especially one that retailed at 20 pounds, would be large enough to allow the reader to peruse the images without the aid of a magnifying glass. No doubt cost was at the heart of it, but unfortunately it does make this unusual but worthwhile project feel a little cheap, and neither Ryan's words nor Eager's many iconic images deserve that.