World Champions (2nd edition) continues the story of South African rugby in a new chapter that includes coverage of the momentous 2023 Rugby World Cup win by South Africa’s Springboks.

South Africa won the 2023 Rugby World Cup by defeating New Zealand 12-11 in front of more than 80 000 spectators at the Stade de France. As this 2nd edition shows, in winning the Webb Ellis Cup for the fourth time, the Springboks became the competition’s most successful team. Back-to-back victories in Yokohama in 2019 and Paris in 2023 inspired a renewed appreciation of the skills that have always existed across South Africa’s racial spectrum. In its telling of this story, World Champions 2nd Edition again offers readers insights that go beyond the media-led rendition of South African rugby.

Further additions to this 2nd edition include a revised Introduction, expanded Index, updates to the history of South Africa’s first steps toward playing international rugby in the late nineteenth century, as well as additional content about, inter alia institutions such as the national governing bodies, and the winning teams in 1995, 2007, 2019 and 2023.

In this way, the 2nd edition continues to provide both the most-relevant and most-current history of South African rugby and the many organisations and individuals that have contributed to its evolution.

Jonty Winch traces the complicated history of South African rugby from its establishment in the Cape in 1879 through to the 2019 World Cup championship.

As he explores key events and questions entrenched narratives, Winch opens a compelling new window on colonialism, apartheid, and the evolution of South African society.

This book explores how cricket in South Africa was shaped by society and society by cricket. It demonstrates the centrality of cricket in the evolving relationship between culture, sport and politics starting with South Africa as the beating heart of the imperial project and ending with the country as an international pariah. The contributors explore the tensions between fragmentation and unity, on and off the pitch, in the context of the racist ideology of empire, its 'arrested development' and the reliance of South Africa on a racially based exploitative labour system. This edited collection uncovers the hidden history of cricket, society, and empire in defining a multiplicity of South African identities, and recognises the achievements of forgotten players and their impact.

‘Highly readable and packed with fascinating historical detail, this is the compelling story of a ripsnorting South African cricketer whose career was smothered by the shameless colour prejudice of Cecil John Rhodes and his snobbish cronies. By turns formidable, sad, enlivening and enormously informative, this book pays Hendricks the honour that has long been his due.’  – Bill Nasson
 
William Henry ‘Krom’ Hendricks was the first sportsman to be formally barred from representing South Africa on the basis of race. Hailing from Cape Town’s Bo-Kaap, he played in 1892 for the South African Malay team against the touring English, who insisted that he was among the best fast bowlers in the world. This made his exclusion from South Africa’s tour of England in 1894 all the more unjust.
 
Ranged against Hendricks were virulent racism and a political alliance between arch-imperialist Cecil John Rhodes, Afrikaner Bond leader J.H. Hofmeyr, and William Milton, who controlled cricket at the Cape through the Western Province Cricket Union.  Too Black to Wear Whites  documents Hendricks’s tireless struggle for recognition and the public controversies around his exclusion. The book shows how Hendricks was further sidelined as club teams made up of different races were prevented from playing against one another, saving white players the embarrassment of being shown up by the country’s best fast bowler.
 
Considering his importance in South African sports history, surprisingly little is known about Krom Hendricks. The story of his life is told here for the first time in a fascinating drama that describes the formation of a segregated South Africa through the career of an exceptional cricketer who dared to test the boundaries of the system.