First published in Cape Argus, 15 March 2002. John Young on South Africa’s test spinner. Denys Hobson must have been smiling at Paul Adams’s return to test cricket last weekend. Soon after the Proteas returned from the West Indies, with Adams again having been relegated to drinks carrier for most of the tour, the wrist
John Young explores the social ‘season’ of London’s cricket crowds. This article first appeared in The Weekender, 2008. There is a small patch of grass in west London that on one day of the year assumes an importance vastly disproportionate to its size. This is the Coronation Garden in the Lord’s cricket ground. On the
The Cape Town township has become a centre of excellence for producing players, signally hope for the next Olympics. First published in Mail & Guardian, 14 October 2016. “There is no reason why Langa canʼt have five players in the Olympic team in the next decade.” So says Langa Hockey Club coach John McInroy, but
First published in Travel & Food, Sunday Times, 27 April 2008. Golfing in Wales separates the men from the boys, and the sheep from the sheepish, writes John Young. Dr Johnson said that when a man is tired of London he is tired of life. He also said, “By seeing London, I have seen as
First published in Mail & Guardian 29 April 2016. Sports’ Minister Fikile Mbalula’s announcement this week that prominent sporting codes may not bid to host international events is only the latest contretemps in a long line of rows between politicians and sports’ administrators. Ironically, it was the African National Congress which pushed for South
First published in Wisden Cricket Monthly, May 2015. There is a C.L.R. James Institute in New York and a library in the London borough of Hackney but it’s hard to find signs of the author of cricket’s greatest book in his home town. John Young searched high and low. “Tunapuna at the beginning of this
The boxing upset of the 70s – and how the Rand Daily Mail almost lost the scoop. The Rand Daily Mail’s ‘technology-aided’ scoop on Gerrie Coetzee’s win in Monte Carlo 40 years ago almost never got to print. Boxing was big in South Africa in the 1970s. And South Africa had some big boxers. So
All the boys want to be Temba
Exactly a hundred years ago, England and South Africa were battling it out for real. And as John Young shows, the Boer War had a surprising amount to do with cricket
