Kelly’s eye

Dotted about the house is the occasional sporting print. Flash, bang, wallop, what a photograph! At the top of our staircase is Herbert Fishwick’s imperishable study at Sydney in 1928 of Hammond’s pluperfect cover-drive -— coiled power, poise, omnipotence, and with the famous blue handkerchief peeping from his pocket. Among the family snaps and sepia descendants on the walls of the downstairs cloakroom is Neil Leifer’s bespoke, breathtaking birdseye shot of Cleveland Williams canvas-flattened by Ali at Houston in 1966, a memorable Neil Libbert evocation of that golden afternoon at Wembley in the same year, and a Patrick Eager 1/500th-of-a-second first-ball freeze-frame of Warne vs Gatting at Old Trafford a dozen summers ago. I’m writing this being watched by a classic Chris Smith of Coe at Moscow in 1980, a Chinese ping-pong player by Eamonn McCabe, a Daley Thompson by Tom Jenkins, Colin Elsey’s slimed-in-mud Fran Cotton at a lineout in Wellington in 1977, Dermot Barry’s immortal shot for the Irish Times of Alan Duggan’s clamorous cornerflag crash-landing to score at Lansdowne Road four decades ago, Steve Powell’s mesmerising, taunting Maradonna vs six Dutchmen in 1982.