The cricket illustrator's art

Cricket imagery has a heritage going back about 275 years, and it may surprise you to learn that the first modern representation of cricket was in fact by a Frenchman. Hubert Gravelot's "The Game of Cricket", from 1739, captures the innocence of children - one with a bat, the other with a ball, quite a few others presumably in the field. Though the French never really took to cricket subsequently, this image marks an important moment in the history of the sport as one of the earliest depictions of the game.

Through the 18th century, illustrations were a part of cricket's narrative - appearing on cigarette cards, in boy's own magazines, political satire and irreverent caricature. Cricket is a sport that well reflects our love of storytelling, and as we all know, an image is worth a thousand words.

While there are various early depictions of the game, in the form of church windows and the like, cricket imagery began to take hold in the first half of the 18th century. Around the same time (1744), the Code of Laws was being drawn up, and the MCC was formed in 1787. As Neil Robinson, a research officer at the MCC and the manager of the cricket library at Lord's, explains: "Cricket was seen as representing the British values that the aristocracy wished to be seen as standing for, and when they or their children sat for their portraits it was natural that in including elements that would speak for their character and accomplishments, they would choose to be pictured with their cricket equipment."

The transition from cricket images making their way from the private collections of the wealthy into the daily lives of the Victorian chattering class began on the pages of various weekly print publications that emerged in the late 19th century. Vanity Fair was first published in 1868, and with its bold, full-colour cartoons it set about further intertwining the British establishment with cricket, reflecting as it did the primary concerns of the Victorian middle classes - the empire, sport, society and politics.

Possibly Vanity Fair's two most famous employees were the cartoonists who went by the names "Ape" and "Spy". Ape was Carlo Pellegrini, a descendent of the Medici family and a trained artist known for being flamboyant. Spy, Sir Leslie Ward, had a classical background, as a protégé of Sir John Everett Millias and the great-grandson of the romantic painter James Ward. He had a keen eye as a society insider and was a cold observer of those in power. Both men brought great charm to their subjects by combining - in often the most delicate way - personality traits with physical representation.

Toby Pennington, an illustrator himself and a collector of the Vanity Fair cartoons, says of Spy's relationship with cricket: "He seemed able to pick up on all the tiny little things that someone might do. Whether it be someone's stance, the way they used a handkerchief, or how they pushed their glasses back up onto their nose. This is a different skill from caricature, where you just draw someone with a big nose and make it bigger. This requires a reading, for it to become a part of the storytelling."

Are they art, though, belonging to the canon of portraiture, or more a part of the charming tradition of illustration? "It would not be fair to describe the Vanity Fair cartoons as great art," John Arlott once said. I put the question to Robinson of the MCC, who said, "I can't comment much on the attitude at the time - this is before MCC even had a Museum - but I think we certainly do consider Spy to be art." And so the debate rumbles on.

Around the same time another storytelling culture was beginning to emerge. One dealing with ruddy-cheeked young boys and buttery crumpet stains on school hymn books. As CLR James recalls in Beyond a Boundary, "[...] there would also be articles on the great cricketers of the day, WG Grace, Ranjitsinhji, Victor Trumper.... The Boy's Own Paper, a magazine called The Captain... the Mike stories by PG Wodehouse and scores of similar books and magazines. These we understood, these we lived by, the principles they taught we absorbed through the pores and practised instinctively. The books we read in class meant little to us." James indicates just how central words and images were to the minds of the young men who might one day grow up to play or follow the game into adulthood. It was a different time; if you wanted to know what a cover drive might look like, you'd have to read the words carefully. The illustration was there to help.

If these images captured the imagination of young schoolboys, British adults - the longer-limbed version of the British schoolboy - enjoyed the ridiculing of public figures of authority just as much has their younger selves once had done.

Punch was a weekly satirical magazine first published in 1841. Punch's cartoons were the internet memes of the day. The publication held a virtual monopoly on the work of the illustrators of the era, and this led to illustrators becoming part of the journalistic establishment.

"To be totally honest, I did it on a whim," Pennington said of his illustration of Shakib Al Hasan knocking on the door of the elite allrounders' club, which he said came from reading Wisden and seeing year after year the page for the record of ten wickets and a century in a Test. A page with only two names - Imran Khan and Sir Ian Botham. "Shakib is a part of the IPL generation of T20 mercenaries that Botham seems to think are ruining the game. He's a good player, though, and I like the idea of him challenging the old guard," Pennington says.

As the digital age has developed and the need for paper has diminished, so too has the nature of illustration. Contemporary illustration isn't just about pencil on paper. As Gareth Proskourine-Barnett, illustration tutor at the University of Worcester points out, "We've seen illustration, typography, gif imagery and collages among other things coming much closer together.

"If illustration dies then so too does our ability to produce something imaginative that runs alongside the accepted norm of everything being, and needing to be a part of believable, everyday reality. Sometimes sport and people do things that operate outside of those terms. Sometimes, reality is only so valuable."

Another image-maker, Nicola Davies, is not an illustrator, but her work is very much illustrative, and "Art of Fielding" is a great example of the new ways image-makers are intertwining sport and image once again in the 21st century.

"I've always been an admirer of typographic designs and a bit of a sucker for fonts," says Davies, whose designs have been used to raise money for the Time for Change campaign, and who gives 10% of all her proceeds to the mental health charity Mind. "I found Mike Yardy's open disclosure about his mental health issues incredibly inspiring and I wanted to use my work as an opportunity to provide awareness of mental health issues, because I've had my own problems with depression and know how difficult it can be to ask for help."

Illustration's role in the 21st century falls into the nooks and crannies of an age dominated by technical innovation and speed. Has there ever been a sport in which the most charming and timeless details, the smallest points of interest, are celebrated the way they are in cricket? As Robinson suggests, "Cricket is fortunate in having always been a sport that has benefited from a substantial cultural hinterland, and it remains a big part of what people love about the game."

As image-makers change the way they work to fit the world we live in, illustration - a tradition nearly as old as the game itself - lives on. Cricket is a game to which, it seems, creative-minded people cannot help but gravitate, and with illustrators like Pennington and conscientious print-makers like Davies the form will continue to capture the game we love with the warmth, wit and craft of all those that have come before.