Death Of A Sporting Hero

A rare thing for this blog, but for once something that has nothing to do with Spain or Mallorca.

Basil D'Oliveira has died.

Why, among other deaths, should D'Oliveira's passing demand that I indulge in a spot of obituary writing? He wasn't, after all, that great a cricketer. He was a good one but no more than that. The reason lies in his story and in the way it affected me.

A South African Cape coloured, D'Oliveira was denied the opportunity under South Africa's apartheid system to play cricket at the highest levels. He came to England, took British citizenship and qualified for the test team. His inclusion in the England side set off two momentums - one was the later selection of other South Africans but without the same moral justification; the second was the eventual abandonment of apartheid.

As a nine-year-old, I didn't appreciate what apartheid meant, but it was as a nine-year-old that I first saw D'Oliveira play. It was the Hastings festival match against the touring Australians, and he was in a team - A.E.R. Gilligan's XI - with another South African (Eddie Barlow, who was to become a fierce critic of apartheid) as well as a Pakistani, Mushtaq Mohammad.

What stood out from this match was the fact that, in the days when six-hitting was a rarity, D'Oliveira hit two, both out of the ground. For a nine-year-old, he was an exciting and unusual player; only Gary Sobers or Colin Milburn hit sixes.

It was my great uncle, who took me to the match, who explained the situation with D'Oliveira. I'm not sure he particularly approved of "Dolly" possibly playing for England, but for me it was hard to get my head around why he couldn't play for South Africa. But when he first appeared for England, two years later, I was ecstatic. I had, in my own small way, discovered D'Oliveira at the Hastings match; he was "my" player.

It was a further two years on when the full implications of D'Oliveira's England test place were to surface. He hadn't had a particularly good season, but he was chosen for the final test of the summer when Roger Prideaux was declared unfit. I was at that Oval match, one famous for its storm and Derek Underwood bowling England to victory against Australia on a badly rain-affected wicket.

D'Oliveira scored a hundred. 158 to be precise. There seemed to me no reason why he wouldn't now be selected for the winter tour. To South Africa.

I recall my shock when listening eagerly to the radio as the tour squad was announced. D'Oliveira wasn't in it. Tom Cartwright, a better bowler but not in D'Oliveira's league as a batsman, was chosen ahead of him. There could only have been one explanation, as far as I was concerned: politics.

What happened next was either fortunate or unfortunate, depending on your point of view. Cartwright developed an injury, couldn't tour and so D'Oliveira replaced him. It was then that all hell broke out. The South African government claimed it was a political selection, which was a bit rich, the tour was called off, South Africa's own tour of England in 1970 was cancelled, and eventually sporting sanctions were imposed which did have a profound impact on finally ending apartheid.

What wasn't known, but now is, was the part that the English cricketing establishment had played in seeking to keep D'Oliveira out of the squad. The journalist and commentator E.W. Swanton was to the fore in doing so, as was Colin Cowdrey, the England captain at the time. On purely cricketing grounds, Cowdrey might have had a reasonable argument, while it also came to be known that Dolly did like a drink. But the politics had initially overriden both D'Oliveira's credentials as a player and any question as to his fitness.

A further two years on, I sat my English O Level. The exam included the option to write an essay on a sporting hero. Afterwards, I asked a friend, who I knew would have taken the sporting option, who his subject had been: Tommie Smith, the American sprinter who had given the black-gloved fist salute at the 1968 Olympics. I had written about D'Oliveira.

From different sports, we had both come to write about similar things. Through sport, in addition to music of the time as well as the not infrequent news of race issues in America, we had been exposed to the injustice and absurdity of racism. Our education was not that of the classroom but of the sports arena. It was the lesson as to the grotesqueness of racism and apartheid and the effect it could have on one man, not a great cricketer but a good cricketer, that affected me, and one I have never forgotten.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.