Elgar Variations

Another hard lesson in my inadequacies as a sports photographer. At the tennis a earlier in the week I seemed to be too close to the court at times but today at the Oval I felt seriously under-gunned trying to capture the action in the middle.

This was the first day of a county championship match between Surrey and Gloucestershire and my first trip to the Oval in far too long. The day ended with honours fairly even as Surrey reached 279 for five wickets. The main run scorer for Surrey was Dean Elgar who fell two short of what would have been a well deserved century - and this photo captures the unfortunate moment when he mistimed a rather ugly slog/sweep and was caught at backward point.

You can read a more professional summary of the day and see better quality pictures here - although the BBC don't seem to have captured this key moment for some reason :-)