Former England captain Michael Atherton has unveiled a plaque honouring the journalist remembered as “the finest of all cricket writers”, John Woodcock.

Woodcock, who was chief cricket correspondent at The Times between 1954 and 1987 and was once described as “the poet laureate of cricket”, died in 2021.

An event remembering Woodcock took place on Saturday at St Nicholas Church in Longparish, Hampshire, on what would have been the writer’s 100th birthday.

Unveiling a stone plaque featuring an image of a woodcock bird in flight at the event, Atherton described his Times predecessor as “one of the best”.

“He did it for a long, long time and saw the tremendous changes that the game went through,” the former Lancashire and England batsman said.

“His first tour to Australia in 1954-55 as The Times cricket correspondent they went by boat, and it took them six weeks to get to Australia.

“By the mid 80s, when he did his last Ashes tour, that would have been a very different scenario.

“There was a different relationship between journalists and players then than there is now… it was a slightly different time and perhaps there was less need for as much pointed criticism as there is today.”