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Archie Henderson
Biography
Archie Henderson has won no awards, written no books and never played any representative sport. He was an under-11 tournament-winning tennis player as a boy, but left the game when he discovered rugby where he was one of the worst flyhalves he can remember. This did not prevent him from having opinions on most things in sport.
His moment of glory came in 1970 when he predicted - correctly as it turned out - that Griquas would beat the Blue Bulls (then still the meekly named Noord-Transvaal) in the Currie Cup final. It is something for which he has never been forgiven by the powers-that-be at Loftus. Archie has played cricket in South Africa and India and gave the bowling term military medium a new and more pacifist interpretation. His greatest ambition was to score a century on Llandudno beach before the tide came in.
Archie Henderson writes a column about sport, well, sort of. It has also included eating out.
Heyneke Meyer, a man of much anxiety, can relax.
The way some people went on after the Zambia football team's bus was stoned at Soccer City last week, you'd have thought that Chipolopolo had come under attack by a mob of panga-wielding maniacs.
The Gabba, where South Africa have been playing Australia, meant something different to us the last time these teams played a cricket Test at the Brisbane venue.
Leave the country for just a few weeks and when you return the place is deurmekaar.
It's been an exhilarating, confusing and depressing week in sport.
If Miguel Cabrera - known as Miggy - doesn't ring a bell, that's probably because you are not an ESPN-addicted insomniac and baseball is not your game.
Sorry to spoil your Monday morning, but the Springboks are not good enough to beat the All Blacks on Saturday.
I once bowled to JM Coetzee.
We thought we'd watch the Boks at Subiaco stadium on Saturday (Subi to the locals who live in the suburb) and ended up at Paterson stadium.
Two South African coaches face a critical weekend in what will be a start for both.
Al ocal hagiographer was unhappy last week when one South African was muscled out of a deserved spotlight by another.
It's been an uplifting fortnight.
It's just as well the Sharks lost. We have been spared another recession, according to John Loos.
As we all know from what happened here in 1995, 2003 and 2010, it's always all right on the night.
Hashim Amla must be a Sharks fan. Isn't everyone in Durban?
In 2001 Steve Waugh took the Australian cricket team to Gallipoli en route to England. It was an attempt to invoke the Anzac spirit ahead of an Ashes tour.
It's in years like this when the South African Athletics Annual comes in handy. The book is a labour of love, edited these days by the polymath Riel Hauman, and becomes essential reading in an Olympic year.
The Last Eight Club at Wimbledon is an exclusive group. It admits as members only those players who reach the quarterfinals (and, in the case of doubles, only semifinalists) of what is correctly called The Championships, Wimbledon.
The ticket to Ellis Park on Saturday mentioned nothing about a dress code. So it was like arriving at a black-tie dinner wearing a safari suit. That's what 40 years (or more) of being spoiled in the press box does to you.
The football season came to an end on Saturday afternoon, but that doesn't mean the soccer stops.
Benni McCarthy's two cracking goals, which sealed a 4-2 win for Pirates against Golden Arrows, caused the cavernous Moses Mabhida to, for once this season, come alive.
If you give us jock journos a sniff at a pun, a simile or a metaphor, we're like a pack of bloodhounds. Good or, mostly, bad we'll be out there on the trail trying to outdo one another.
Remember when Jake White refused to pick small guys? Luke Watson springs to mind.
Is Itumeleng Khune just dreaming about "African flair" in our football? BBK did not seem convinced on Saturday night at Soccer City.
We probably won't miss Butch James. Not yet.
Barry Richards, whose thoughts on cricket entertained and educated The Times readers during South Africa's series against New Zealand, is one of those prophets without honour.
The dust has begun to settle on our terrible cricket storm. Or has it?
The board of directors at Cricket South Africa probably feel they deserve a pat on the back after Saturday's catharsis. They don't.
The people at Cricket South Africa are either slow readers or slow thinkers. This could account for their numerous press statements which appear to be aimed at gullible 10-year-olds.
It comes as no surprise that men like Morne Steyn and Elton Jantjies - and a few others too - take more than 500 pots at the posts in a single day's goalkicking practice. That's why they seldom seem to miss in a game.
Sport in our land is undeniably flourishing. Despite suspicions - even proof in some cases - of theft, corruption or plain incompetence, we are all in a much better sporting space than, say, 20 years ago.
There are quite a few trees growing around the main cricket oval at Wynberg Boys High courtesy of Richard Levi. It's a tradition at one of Cape Town's great cricket schools that when a First XI batsman reaches a hundred, a tree goes into the ground.
UDRS does not roll off the tongue as easily as LBW. It's not even easy to spell. Someone should invent a nice acronym for cricket's "umpire decision review system" since it's going to be with us no matter what the panjandrums of the BCCI (another clumsy abbreviation) might say.
Cricket gets the chance this week to radically reinvent itself. Sadly, it's a chance that is likely to be put down.
Until two Sundays ago, Chris Morris was a promising young fast bowler getting to grips with first-class cricket.
The Nicholson inquiry into the cricket scandal may be over this week as quickly as the ODI in Paarl last Wednesday, but the result could take a while longer to come through.
Some were just old, others were tragically young. Some were world-famous, others obscure but morbidly fascinating. Some weren't even human.
Jose Mourinho has long had this obsession with beating Barcelona.
Gerald Majola has been in hiding - figuratively, that is - ever since it became clear that he paid himself massive bonuses from money that belonged to his employer, Cricket South Africa.
The trouble with passing years is that there are just too many Springboks. It gets harder to keep up.
Basil D'Oliveira's significance for South African sport cannot be over-estimated. He was this country's most influential cricketer of the 20th century.
It's difficult to keep Simmy Lewis on the topic, but then it's not easy to confine a conversation to just Joe Frazier when you're trying to fit 94 years of reminiscences into an hour.
Len Killeen, who died last week aged 72, was a rugby player whom Danie Craven wanted to paint right out of history. Up to a point, the Doc succeeded.
This is for Peter Delmar, Joe the Pharmacist, Clinton van der Berg, Sandy Hattingh, Craig Shelver, Jimmy Abbott and all those other Lions fans who have been the butt of our Lions jokes for so long now.
Cricket and corruption have been batting partners for so long now that Saturday's putsch in which Mtutuzeli Nyoka was ousted did not come as a surprise.
On Sunday, the Boks, as Bob Skinstad will again profoundly observe, "have a game on their hands".
What has been most impressive about the current Springboks is their discipline.
A few times during the 80 minutes that it took the Springboks to overpower the Fijian junta's team at the Rugby World Cup, the TV camera revealed glimpses of the South African coaches' box.
The Boks were surrounded and running out of ammunition. Then, just when it looked as if Wales would overrun them, on came the cavalry and the ending was a happy one.
The onset of the cricket season is always associated with warmer weather, the sound of leather on willow and the smells of linseed oil and freshly cut grass. This summer it is marked by a foul stench.
At our place, depending on who's in charge of the remote, you can watch Aussie cricket or Aussie cooking.
Who would have thought PE could be such a beautiful place? But was that rugby result in the Friendly City on Saturday night a promising portent for the Boks in next month's World Cup, or a flash in the pan?
You know Springbok rugby is in trouble when there's a great grasping at straws.
TWO years ago this column offered the possibility of Morné Steyn as a fullback for the Springboks. It was made at a time of flyhalf abundance and in the hope of retaining the Bulls man's unerring boot.
Nathan Lyon, Trent Copeland, James Pattinson: who the bloody hell are these guys?
There was a time when I could have cried over a Springbok defeat like Saturday's. But I am grown up now, so sulking and abuse are much more mature responses to disasters like the one in Sydney's Olympic stadium.
They don't hold formations very well, their defences are ropey and their shots powder-puff. Women's football is girls playing soccer.
EVERY year around this time, the Spirit of Cricket lecture is delivered at Lord's. It was inaugurated in 2001 in memory of Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge, a former president of the MCC, but better known as a captain of England who once came out to bat with a broken arm against the feared West Indies fast bowlers Wes Hall and Charlie Griffiths.
IT'S been a grim week for our rugby. The Lions were said to be bankrupt, the Stormers were found to be bankrupt and Sarel Pretorius revealed he'd prefer to be a Wara-tah than a Chee-tah. And who can blame the Free State scrumhalf? When the Bok coach thinks Ricky Januarie is better than you are, it's time to move on.
The best flyhalf in South Africa wasn't even playing flyhalf on Saturday.
