"But to find images of Ranjitsinjhi and Fry in full flight is quite a find, certainly in the format that it was captured makes it even more unique and unusual."
Upon receiving the reel containing the 465 individual images that made up the 19-second footage, technicians at the NFSA then set about creating their own version of the Kinora machine, which was rendered largely obsolete by the rise of cinema in the early 20th century, to view it.
While a number of Kinora machines, invented by France's Lumière brothers who were pioneers of modern cinema, still survive intact the NFSA only took possession of one after the cricket film had been painstakingly digitised and enhanced.
"We originally thought if we could play then we could film it as it ran through then we would have something like that finished product, but there was a fair bit of motion blur when we played it," Wray said.
The solution involved modifying an existing film winder onto which the brass spindle holding the images was loaded, enabling technicians to scroll through the 'frames' with a metal ruler used to hold each individual image in place so it could be digitally photographed.
The footage was then compiled frame by frame, as well as being stabilised and centred to smooth out the jumps and bumps that had developed though use over the years.
Wray believes there were one or two other Kinora reels made from the filming session with Fry and Ranjitsinhji, but none has yet been recovered so the restored footage remains the only existing record of the two greats – whose closely intertwined careers were about to forge divergent paths – batting together.
"They were both at their peak in that period, but Ranji then had a poor series against Australia in 1902 and never played for England again, while Fry was in a patch of form where he was scoring centuries left, right and centre," he said.
"So comparatively, as to where their respective careers were at that point, this represents a nice historical snapshot as well."