When Punter went mental

I've been to three World Cups. For the first one, in 1999, I was representing the Daily Telegraph; I covered the 2011 one for Reuters; and I went off to the West Indies in 2007 as a freelance photographer.

I enjoyed the 2007 World Cup. I turned up for just the final two weeks of the competition as I had decided that it would be far too expensive to cover the whole thing.

One of the matches I decided to cover was the semi-final in St Lucia between Australia and South Africa and I spent many hours in a government office in Bridgetown, Barbados, obtaining the appropriate visa for my 15-hour flying visit. Imagine my disappointment when I arrived in St Lucia and there was no one at all checking visas or even passports of the incoming flyers. It was straight out of the airport and then on to a bus to the cricket ground.

The final was back in Barbados a few days later, between Australia and Sri Lanka. Ricky Ponting was the Australia captain at the time. At one stage he tried to get the attention of his team-mate Brad Hogg in the field so that he would move his position slightly. Hogg didn't hear his captain's request at all.

Ponting went completely mental. Shouting, waving and pointing in a manner that was quite un-Ponting like. It contrasts nicely with the photo of Ponting that I posted in this Shot Selection series of him playing with his daughter Emmy after a Test win in 2009.

As a photographer, it pays to be aware of what is going on during a cricket match all over the field. It is definitely not just about what happens when the ball is bowled to the batsman.