Picture perfect

Award-winning photographer's best pix of 2022, PLUS: The best links from the World Cup final (and the greatest finals across a range of sports)

I’ve known Andrew Cornaga almost as long as I’ve been a sports journalist. Back in the day, the Sunday News, the first masthead I drew a salary from, had a deal with Cornaga’s Photosport agency. In quaint newspaper scenes from ye olde times, we’d decide upon our feature subjects for the week, then drive across to Photosport’s offices in Newmarket to look at negatives through a magnifying glass on a lightbox and select the best. We were never short of options. Cornaga has been in the game since the 80s, when he was a darkroom technician and junior photographer at the lost and lamented Auckland Star, before setting up Photosport in the early 90s. He has a long, long list of awards, including thrice being named Supreme Sports Journalist of the Year at the TP McLean Awards. I asked ‘Corns’ to pick his five favourite photos of the year and talk a little about each. They were all shot on a Nikon D6.

1. I like this cricket photo (lead photo, above) because it’s a little bit different. The ball is dead centre and there’s a real element of ‘what happened next?’ Marco Jansen had just bowled to Kyle Jamieson who popped the ball up. What happened next was that Jansen collided with Sarel Erwee and the chance was missed. Jamieson was out two balls later though as South Africa went on to win the test.