Shot selection

Most sports fans remember Liverpool turning up for an FA Cup final in white suits. You've got to be uber cool to pull off the white outfit. Not many can. John Travolta is the most successful wearer of a white outfit in history. In Saturday Night Fever (1977), he wore a white polyester suit, which was sold at an auction for US$145,000. Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson had a go at the white suit (not the same one, I hasten to add) and in my opinion got away with it. Author Tom Wolfe had a shot too.

I decided weeks before the match between Middlesex and Yorkshire that I would cover the entire four days and attempt to do a behind-the-scenes at Lord's at the same time. It's obviously relatively easy for a photographer to sit in one spot with a 600-millimetre lens on a tripod, waiting for something interesting to happen that makes a good photograph. It's slightly harder to rush about trying to find different angles, using different lenses and also trying to get a few significant moments on the trusty 600.

I popped into Lord's on the Monday, the day before the contest began, to see if I could get a couple of shots. On Tuesday I walked along St John's Wood road, primed to see some MCC members lined up outside the famous Grace gates. No one was there - not a sausage. This "project" had got off to an inauspicious beginning. Not to worry, I thought, as I cracked on and moved inside looking for a better, more photogenic opportunity.

Today I've decided to let you in on the dark arts of gaining access to a cricketer for what we are going to call a "special shoot". Normally, for a special shoot you have to approach the media liaison officer and persuade her or him that it is in everyone's interest that a photographer (me) should have five or six minutes with a particular cricketer, and that the subsequent photograph will take cricket to the next level (whatever that means). Normally this approach will get one of two responses. Either a positive one, which may be something like: "I'll ask the cricketer and see what we can do", or "No."

I have had an instance where a cricketer agreed to a quick special shoot at Southampton during a one-day county match. No media liaison officer was involved in this case. The player wasn't due to bat till seven wickets had fallen, so he was ready to do a five-minute posing session there and then, as his team had just begun batting. I stupidly told him to let me set up my lights and that he should come over to the nets in about five or ten minutes. I kept sending messages to the dressing room saying that I was ready. Six hours later I gave up and packed up my gear and when I drove past the Worcestershire coach (a bus, not the human coach of the team) at a nearby McDonald's, I was tempted to go in and give this player a piece of my angry mind. I won't name the player as he's a nice guy and also comes from Wales. No point holding a grudge, is there? Or is there?

I ducked under some turnstiles with my gear and quickly made my way to the media centre. I managed a word with the South African cricket official who had suggested over the phone 10 minutes before, when I was still outside, that I should come back tomorrow, and an appropriate pass was magically produced from someone else who was helpful.

England amassed a huge score in their first innings in Cape Town, thanks to a great partnership of 399 between the swashbuckling Ben Stokes and Yorkshire's Jonny Bairstow. Stokes got most of the attention as he plundered a magnificent 258.