James Borrowdale

Mar 1, 2025 | nzherald.co.nz | James Borrowdale

Starting early: Neil Wagner with brother Peter, wicketkeeping, with the trampoline as backstop. Photo / suppliedAs he ghost-wrote Neil Wagner’s autobiography, James Borrowdale says he tried to tap into the cricketer’s mindset and found his voice. The voice of cricketer Neil Wagner, his Afrikaans accent softened by 15 years in New Zealand, became so familiar over the months we worked together on his autobiography, I sometimes found it narrating my dreams. Potent, bewildering dreams.

Dec 11, 2024 | inkl.com | James Borrowdale

The England Test captain, Ben Stokes, is among the players who have invested in Sixes. Photograph: Sixes Last month Headingley got a new cricket venue. It doesn’t have a lot in common with the long-established and much more famous one down the road – this one tends to be drier, warmer and significantly more attractive to young people. In October a similar venue arrived in Bristol, both just a couple of miles and a world away from the County Ground.

Dec 6, 2024 | theguardian.com | James Borrowdale

From the spot where Helen Julius spread her arms across the peeling, sun-flecked green paint of the pavilion’s bench seats, Eden Park’s Outer Oval in Auckland was almost picturesque. There were the white-clad cricketers – Auckland batting, Canterbury in the field – and a bank of agapanthus just beginning to break out in flower beyond the sight-screen on the ground’s northern boundary. Sparrows, nesting in the pavilion roof, chattered incessantly.

Nov 28, 2024 | northandsouth.co.nz | Clare Thomson |James Borrowdale |Geoff Bertram |John Sinclair

The disappearedSolitary confinement destroys people, but New Zealand continues to inflict it on our most vulnerable and damaged people, including children, as a matter of course. Aaron Smale reports on the practice that won’t go away and the people that are psychologically annihilated and physically disappeared in state institutions. By Aaron Smale

Nov 28, 2024 | northandsouth.co.nz | Clare Thomson |James Borrowdale

Smith heads for the Coromandel Peninsula, almost wilfully oblivious to the fact that society at large, as a malevolent political force tightens its grip on the country, is following the example of his marriage and breaking down. All of that, anyway, is forgotten when his grand vision suddenly becomes his view.