1. Victor Trumper steps out to drive

The cricket world owes a debt to George Beldam. An amateur all-rounder for Middlesex, Beldam was also one of the pioneers of sports photography in the early 20th century, latching onto new shutter-speed technology that allowed him to capture in freeze-frame even the most deft player movements. Importantly, he realised the limitations of taking shots from the boundary edge and so arranged to photograph the greats of cricket’s golden age from close quarters.

The most iconic of all his images is that of Australian batting hero Victor Trumper leaping out to drive. No longer subject to the same volume of literature as other Australian cricket icons like Bradman or Warne, it is through Beldam’s image that we define Trumper; ironically so too, because the shot was staged for the camera on Australia’s 1905 Ashes tour.

“In composition and content, it is a very great photograph,” said Gideon Haigh. “It is both the first and last word in batting, insofar as batting consists of making instinctive what begins as a set of quite unnatural motions.” Another great Australian cricket writer, Jack Fingleton, said he felt cheated when it was pointed out to him by Richie Benaud that Trumper’s body had been superimposed onto the background of Bramall Lane, Sheffield (this, it turned out, was not actually true). Still, he saw it as “so perfect in the smallest detail” for the way it presented Trumper’s technique in more thrilling detail than we might have been afforded.

The image and others in the series Beldam captured that day give fullest expression to Trumper’s epic grandeur, preserving it for eternity. Without it we could comprehend little of Trumper’s prowess, which was not captured in the now modest-looking statistics left by greats of the golden age. Sadly, the only surviving footage of Trumper batting features a single practice delivery, one in which an unseen bowler performs the unforgivable sin of sending a huge wide down the leg side thus ensuring we’d never be able to watch a single one of Trumper’s magnificent strokes.

Other stills from Beldam’s series on Trumper are equally impressive. One in which he plays a lofted on-drive manages in four frames to illustrate the dexterity of Trumper’s technique as his feet move swiftly to the pitch of the ball and his bottom hand moves from a low position on the bat handle to meet his gloveless top hand milliseconds before he mightily clouts the ball. Only that can draw attention away from Trumper’s imposing frame; tall, lean and chiseled with his Australian skull cap symbolic of the era.

CB Fry, the man who put words to the famous images (in The Art of Batting, 1905), said that Trumper “had no style and yet he was all style”. It’s thanks to George Beldam that we can truly understand what he meant.

‘So perfect in the smallest detail’: Australian great Victor Trumper. Photograph: Hulton Archive Photograph: Hulton Archive

2. Nicky Winmar makes a stand

There are times when a photograph is able to transcend time and place and knock you sideways with its thundering impact. In Australian sport there is no greater example than Wayne Ludbey’s shot of Nicky Winmar in 1993 responding to the racial taunts of the Collingwood fans at Victoria Park with a defiant display of pride.

The gesture and its accompanying image set in motion a drastic re-think of the way the AFL dealt with racial abuse, a problem that continues to bubble at the surface of football, just as it does elsewhere in Australian society.

When Winmar lifted his jumper, pointed at his skin and declared, “I’m black and I’m proud to be black,” Ludbey snapped an image that is emblematic not only within a sport, but a nation divided on issues of race and prejudice. Providing the decent case that a picture can tell so many more than a thousand words, the 20th anniversary of the incident brought with it an entire book, which sought to flesh out the struggle of Winmar and all indigenous Australians, and also shed light on Ludbey’s image and a similar one snapped by his colleague John Feder.

The author of that book, Matthew Klugman, said: “It’s hard to think of a more important popular Australian image over the last two decades. It’s up there with the 1968 [Olympics] black power salute as a defining image of race and sport, and its enduring significance can be seen in the way it continues to be shown over and over again – in newspapers, posters, galleries and on city walls.”

Winmar, lean and athletic like his indigenous teammate Gilbert McAdam, had just run rampant over the Magpies to win St Kilda the game. Always more willing to offer public statements than his reclusive and intensely private teammate, McAdam said, “All I know is I wanted to make a statement that day.”

Having been racially vilified by members of the Collingwood cheer squad as he checked out the ground’s surface at half-time of the reserves game, Mc Adam confronted Winmar in the centre of Victoria Park. “I grabbed Nick and said, ‘Boy, we have got to do something today. We have got to make a statement. We will show this mob ... we have got to make them quiet’.”

Winmar and his teammate put on a clinic. “I think Gilbert McAdam got the three votes and I was second best,” recalled Winmar in 2009, “and it was the first time St Kilda had won at Victoria Park in ages. But all day we were getting racially abused.”

“His finger did the talking and the walking. That’s a powerful statement,” said McAdam.

Feder and Ludbey’s role was vital in capturing the moment, as Channel Seven cameras were pointed elsewhere as Winmar made his famous gesture. “It was a very courageous and symbolic thing that Winmar did,” said Ludbey, “I was close enough to hear Winmar say “I’m black and I’m proud to be black” and I knew straight away the significance of his brave act.”

“People forget that words have a big impact,” said Winmar. “They can lift a person or destroy a person. So that day I responded by saying to those people, and I still say it today: ‘I’m black and I’m proud’.”

The rest of us should be thankful that Ludbey and Feder were on hand to capture the moment.

Nicky Winmar pictured in front of the famous image in 2013. Photograph: Hamish Blair/AAP Photograph: Hamish Blair/AAP

3. The Tied Test

Sometimes a great sports image is all about timing and luck, as was the case with Ron Lovitt’s era-

defining shot of the final thrilling moments of Brisbane’s Tied Test during the 1960-61 series between Australia and the West Indies. His image of Ian Meckiff being run out by Joe Solomon to end the game is one of cricket’s most enduring and captured in a single frame the invigorating spirit in which both sides played that summer under their adventurous captains, Richie Benaud and Frank Worrell.

Lovitt arrived at the ground that day with 36 negatives and once the tense and final 8-ball over came around he only had one left. Another photographer, Bob Barnes of the Courier Mail, had been more frugal and had six remaining so the pair struck a deal to combine forces in the hope of capturing an historic moment.

Barnes snapped the first six balls of the over. Lovitt, keeping his composure and not snapping as the Australian pair scrambled a single to tie the scores from the penultimate delivery, then managed to decipher the blur of frantic players to pull the trigger just as Solomon’s throw beat the last-gasp lunge of Meckiff to reach the crease.

The photograph is an evocative and thrilling snapshot of one of cricket’s heart-stopping moments.

Long shadows creep across the ground and a despairing Lindsay Kline turns to see his partners’ stumps broken as Solomon “tumultuously bullseyes it in a convulsive, conclusive clatter”. Wes Hall raises his arms in hope and desperation while Rohan Kanhai leaps into the air in jubilation. At the bowler’s end only Worrell is not entirely consumed by the excitement, an ocean of calm as he backs up the stumps at the other end.

Lovitt’s image, like that famous Test series itself, left us with something visceral and dramatic; it’s a deeply moving suspension of that telling split second, one that not even the greatest scribe could hope to capture in all its perfect minutiae.

4. Summons and Provan – the Gladiators

If every sport deserves its own defining image then the one snapped by John O’Gready of Norm Provan and Arthur Summons as the muddied pair embraced following St George’s eighth successive grand final win is a towering monument to rugby league.

The tall, thickset Provan had just captained St George to the famous 1963 grand final victory on a bog patch at the Sydney Cricket Ground. The shot sees the mud-caked second-rower towering over his Western Suburbs opponent Summons in a touching moment of consolation. In that instant Summons is defeated but valiant. He and his opponent are equals on different sides in a tough game.

O’Gready was in the perfect position with his hand-held light meter, using his free hand to snap a shot that was to become known as “The Gladiators” and eventually adorn the NRL’s premiership trophy, a gesture for which Provan was deeply honoured. “If I drop dead tomorrow I will always be happy with the life rugby league has given me,” he said. “I am immensely pleased with it and it will sink in later how much it means.”

Summons described the shot as “miraculous, a moment of inspiration frozen in time”. Ironically, at the time the shot was taken Summons was actually complaining about the refereeing and telling Provan that his side was lucky to escape with a win. Another of O’Gready’s images that day, shows Provan being chaired from the ground by teammatesand another is a close-up of his muddied face.

Fittingly, Summons took time last year at the unveiling of the new NRL trophy named in his honour to remember O’Gready and his contribution to the moment. “Unfortunately the great photographer who took the picture isn’t here to share this moment with us because, without him, we’d have been forgotten 50 years ago,” he said. “That poor soul ran up and down the sideline with mud up to nearly his knees.”

“He was in a suit and had his pants tucked into his socks. He was an incredible man and it’s a pity he wasn’t here to enjoy the accolades that rugby league is now giving to Norm and I.

St George’s Norm Provan and Western’s Arthur Summons pose with the famous picture of themselves after the 1963 rugby league premiership grand final. Photograph: Getty Images Photograph: Getty Images

5. Jack Johnson at Rushcutters Bay

Where to start with the 1908 world heavyweight title fight between Canada’s Tommy Burns and African-American fighter Jack Johnson? With US and European promoters having put a “colour bar” in place to prevent black boxers from challenging white champions, Sydney promoter Hugh McIntosh seized upon the opportunity to bring heayweight title-holder Burns and ‘coloured’ champion Johnson to Sydney in order to settle the title.

The enormity of the moment, with 20,000 men (women were not allowed in) crammed into a hastily constructed timber stadium in Rushcutters Bay, is captured stunningly in the famous panoramic photo by the Charles Kerry Studio. It shows the entourage of Johnson, a slave’s son from Texas, and that of the Canadian having entered the ring before the fight. Johnson’s brutal win and the accompanying film footage, which travelled the world thereafter, were the start of his seven-year reign as the world’s best at a time when he faced unimaginable prejudice in his own country.

The fight, also immortalised in a watercolour by Norman Lindsay, took place on the land of the Gadigal people and speaking at the 100th speaking at the 100th anniversary celebrations, Gadigal representative Brad Cooke said: “Jack Johnson’s defeat of Tommy Burns marks a great moment for Black people all over the world for it provided an opportunity for the black man to be of equal standing to the white man and in this case prove to be a greater man in boxing.” A mere five years after the fight Jerry Jerome became Australia’s first Aboriginal national champion.

Though incomplete footage survives of the bruising, almost farcical 14-round encounter (it was refereed by the promoter himself), it is Kerry’s panorama that gives perhaps the greatest sense of the atmosphere that surrounded the fight, with onlookers crammed into every inch of the stadium.

Jack Johnson takes on Tommy Burns at Rushcutter’s Bay in 1908.

6. Jesaulenko’s mark

Taking place in perhaps the greatest of all Grand Finals, Alex Jesaulenko’s spectacular mark over Graeme “Jerker” Jenkin in 1970 is emblematic of the most thrilling aspects of Australian Rules Football.

It’s famous for caller Mike Williamson’s cry of “Jesaulenko, you beauty!”. But Jesaulenko himself believes that the photographers played a vital part in making it a perennial favourite. “The images make it look classical, like it was taken from the marking manual,” said Jesaulenko. “Graeme’s a six-foot-four ruckman, I guess there’s a mystique in standing on top of him with your arms outstretched.”

There are four distinct versions of the moment. Rennie Ellis’ lesser-known wide-angle colour shot from low on the ground is a thing of beauty and perhaps now benefits from far less exposure than the others. Clive McKinnon’s picture for The Sun shows Jesaulenko’s outstretched hands about to mark the ball while Dennis Bull’s example in The Age shows Jesaulenko as he begins to grasp the ball in his hands. Perhaps best of all is Bruce Howard’s image showing the high-flying Blue finally clutching the ball to his chest.

Amazingly, the latter three might have missed the famous shot when in the moments leading up to the mark, Bull fumbled in his pocket for some Minties, offering them to his colleagues. McKinnon told The Herald Sun. “I noticed Jezza getting a bit excited as the ball started coming back his way. I told Dennis, don’t be stupid, of course I don’t want a mint, then decided to take one. Then I looked up and yelled out ‘look out, the ball’s coming back!’.”

Without the aid of rapid-fire shutters, each man had only one shot to capture the moment and all managed to pull it off with aplomb. “We were shaking each other’s hands, someone in the member’s yells out ‘did you get the shot?’, and then the member’s all start applauding – not applauding Jezza, they were applauding us for getting the shot,” remembered McKinnon.

“We almost didn’t get it because we were playing with Minties.”