Adam Wakefield

It’s June 4 1993. The first Ashes Test has entered its second day as Shane Warne steps up to bowl to Mike Gatting. The ball pitches nearly half a metre fair way outside leg-stump, bites, bounces and turns. The rest has now become folklore. The Ball of the Century was the threshold from which Shane […]

The rugby world is slowly edging to its Holy Grail, one which only appears every four years. Plans are concocted, armies assembled and opponents vanquished in the four-year dash for the Rugby World Cup, a tournament which forms the primordial soup of international rugby. The Tri-Nations, Six Nations, Super 12/14/15 and Heineken Cup are all […]

Breaking news: Peter de Villiers, the Springbok coach, will at the conclusion of the Springbok’s end-of-year tour to Europe, vacate his position as the No 1 brain with the world champions. Rumours have surfaced, via a high-level source, that De Villiers finally went too far and bluntly put, pissed off his bosses real good. Many […]

Wayne Rooney’s surprising agreement to a new five-year contract with Manchester United, considering the amount of press coverage his apparent fallout with manager Sir Alex Ferguson generated in the space of days, is only a respite from the club’s current problems. Granted, Ferguson once again showed his managerial skill in keeping Rooney for another five […]

Like a Parktown prawn that laughs in the face of doom, the Currie Cup continues to show a resilience that belies the crowded environment of its scheduling every season. Players keep going, or get injured and in most cases come back a few weeks later. Coaches exhaust the Standard Advised Media Etiquette protocol as the […]

Epochs can defined by many different things: an era-changing event, a ground-breaking personality or a shift in dominance from one party to another that takes place over a gradual period of time which often crosses the finish line via what would normally be construed as a meaningless event. For the Cold War, it was the […]

Can anyone tell me what is happening at the Commonwealth Games, apart from the obvious chaos away from the actual sports? I certainly wouldn’t, because in reality I don’t care. While there might be those who say the Commonwealth Games have a place in the international sporting calendar, I firmly belong in the camp that […]

Since my arrival in Melbourne, I have spent much time trying to figure out what makes this island continent and the people who live here tick. It should be said that what follows is merely my opinion, so after you read this and you have something to add, please do so. Australia itself shares certain […]

Do you want to hear something funny? The big news to have hit rugby over the past few weeks hasn’t been Peter de Villiers-motivated, or related to anything on the field. No, this honour belongs to Maria Ramos and Absa. Ever since they sent that fabled SMS to Oregan Hoskins, they have been receiving a […]

The release of Cricket South Africa’s various squads last week showed where the selectors see “the future”. Rusty Theron, who should’ve already made his debut for the Proteas, was the big winner in the T20 squads while Loots Bosman should count himself lucky considering his very sketchy international record. The big calls were made with […]

It was with interest that I was invited to an Aussie Rules game at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, known to us as the MCG and to the locals simply as the G (said with an Aussie twang). What I knew about Aussie Rules was that it’s sort of a combination of netball, rugby and soccer, […]

The second edition of the T20 Champions League is on these shores as I type this. Enrique — or Enreekay — kicked the circus off with a concert at Emmarentia Dam in Johannesburg and did a few numbers before the Lions took on the Indians (referring to the teams without their region/sponsor is easier, unless […]