My 46 days on the road with John Woodcock

Although it was a miracle that he survived until a few weeks before his 95th birthday, the death of John Woodcock, the unrivalled cricket correspondent of the Times from 1954 to 1988, has left an enormous hole in many people’s lives, not least my own. I first met Wooders, as he was known to one and all, at a party at the old Hyde Park hotel in Knightsbridge in May 1962. Two days later as a result of our conversation, I found myself at the Bat and Ball ground in Gravesend on behalf of the Times, without ever before having written a word in anger, trying to put together 500 words about the first day of Kent’s game with Somerset. I had been working in the City and hating it. I told Wooders I wanted to write about cricket and at once he told me with a twinkle that he was not sure he would advise it. We kept talking and the next evening when I returned from the City, I found a telegram asking me to ring him. One of the Times cricket writers was ill and they needed someone to go to Gravesend for the next two days. What about it? I jumped at the chance, drove, there and then, to the Times offices in Printing House Square, picked up my first press ticket, rang my City office the next morning and told them I was ill, and set off for Gravesend. Amazingly they printed almost every word I wrote. And this was how it all began and it was thanks to Wooders.

He was aptly christened the Sage of Longparish by Alan Gibson, himself an eminent cricket writer and broadcaster. But there was so much more to Woodcock than just cricket. He was a great countryman, a most able fisherman, utterly charming, with a wonderful sense of humour, always interesting and, above all, he hated humbug.