Pollock

The air-waves have been ablaze these past few weeks with news of the bi-centenary of Charles Dickens.  So much so that the centenary of the celebrated American painter Jackson Pollock, who was born in January 2012, has gone without much notice.

'Why oh why', readers are thinking, 'is Fantasy Bob tormenting us?  Surely FB means Shaun Pollock - but he's never a hundred years old...............We're confused.'

FB has to come clean.  There is no relation between the 2 Pollocks.  While Wisden doesn't reveal much about Jackson Pollock's bowling action, they do confirm that at the height of his career he was considered to be the most significant American painter of his time.  Perhaps Pollock's significance may have waned in the years since his death in 1956 but in the years up to then he was a pioneer of what became known as action painting, where the physical activity of getting paint on to the surface was important to the work.  In his case his most important works were accomplished by dripping paint onto the canvas which lay flat on the floor.  Highly intricate patterns would be formed through the overlapping drip patterns of a variety of outswingers and inswingers, although critics are still divided as to whether he deployed the doosra at all.

Action painting

Action bowling

It is hard to believe that Jackson Pollock was not a savant about how cricket would develop.  This can be clearly seen in looking at these 2 great works which show how he drew inspiration from yet to be developed cricket technology - and his yet to be born namesake.

Jackson Pollock

Shaun Pollock