John Woodcock

John Charles Woodcock OBE (7 August 192618 July 2021) was an English cricket writer and journalist. He was the cricket correspondent for The Times from 1954 until 1987.

Early life Woodcock was born in Longparish, Hampshire on 7 August 1926, the second son of the Reverend Parry Woodcock and his (much younger) wife Nora Dunsford (née Hutchinson). Since 1906 his father had been rector of Longparish, where the Woodcock family held the right of advowson. Woodcock was born in the rectory when his father was 70. His grandfather had been born in 1813, two years before the Battle of Waterloo. Woodcock completed his primary education at the Dragon School. As a child, he was a good angler before moving onto cricket while attending St Edward's School, Oxford. When he was fifteen, he almost died from septic arthritis. His hip was permanently injured as a result, and he was strapped to a frame for four months. He also reached the final trial of the university cricket team and played for the Authentics (Oxford's second XI). Upon Rowbotham's return, Woodcock became the paper's London sports editor. He became the cricket correspondent for The Times in 1954.

Woodcock was dubbed "the Sage of Longparish" by Alan Gibson, his colleague at The Times. He also edited the Wisden Cricketers' Almanack for six editions from 1981 until 1986, and was credited for improving its reputation and standard. He did not support the sporting boycott of South Africa during the apartheid era, but later acknowledged that his position had been wrong. He was awarded an OBE in 1996 for services to sports journalism.

At the 2018 Sports Book Awards evening, Woodcock received a special award for Outstanding Contribution to Sports Writing. Henry Blofeld said at the event, "John Woodcock is the most thorough watcher of a day’s cricket I've ever known."

Woodcock contributed his final piece for The Times in July 2020 as a tribute to the veteran West Indian cricketer Sir Everton Weekes.

After his death, Woodcock received many tributes from his fellow cricket writers. Mike Selvey wrote that he was "the finest of all cricket writers". According to Derek Pringle, "John Woodcock was the kind of scribe we’d all like to be – elegant, informative and generous with a beautiful turn of phrase." Simon Wilde said, "Some other cricket correspondents of his generation were more celebrated but he was the best.” According to Matthew Engel, "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".

Personal life Woodcock was a lifelong bachelor and had no children. He returned to the village of his birth, Longparish, in 1947. In retirement there, he would have lunch at the village pub, presided over the cricket club and "was patron of the church, where a stained-glass window called 'The Four Seasons' celebrates his family's 250-year connection with the church and village".

Woodcock died on the afternoon of 18 July 2021, at the Old Curacy of Longparish. He was 94 years old.