Long-serving
Cricket correspondent for the Times who also spent six years as editor of Wisden
Every time there is an on-field occurrence – wicket, goal, whatever – at a sporting event, the journalists present will huddle to make sure their interpretation of the incident is precise. This was especially true in the old days, when television replays were either unavailable or unsophisticated. In the cricket press box, though, one figure would stay apart. John Woodcock, the long-serving cricket correspondent of the Times, who has died aged 94, knew what he had seen, trusted his judgment and felt no need to have it validated. He was right far more often than wrong.
If anyone asked, he was very ready to share his opinion. And indeed, throughout his long retirement, pilgrims would descend on the thatched Hampshire cottage where Woodcock had lived more for than 70 years to imbibe his wisdom, wine, anecdotes, fellowship, good nature and what became an unparalleled memory of cricket dating back to Donald Bradman and beyond. “The Sage of Longparish,” his Times colleague Alan Gibson christened him; in time he was simply “the Sage”. There was no other.