Obituary: Basil D'Oliveira
A talented all-rounder, Basil D'Oliveira is remembered more for his role in bringing down South Africa's apartheid regime than for his achievements on the cricket field.
Had the former England player begun his Test cricket career earlier, he might have set the record books rather than history books alight.
However four decades later he is not famous for his five Test centuries but for an affair which exposed the racist policies of his native country South Africa to the world.
It was his omission from an England touring party to South Africa in that led to the country's year long sporting isolation, ending only with the fall of apartheid.
Basil Lewis D'Oliveira was born in Signal Hill, Cape Town, South Africa on 4 October
But being a mixed-race South African during apartheid, he was prevented from playing top-class cricket.
In , he left South Africa at the age of 31, with his wife Naomi, to ply his craft for Middleton in the Lancashire Leagues in England.
Given the nickname Dolly, he impressed with his solid attacking batting style and gentle but tight medium pace bowling.
Basil D’Oliveira: The man who triggered the international cricket boycott of South Africa
Basil D’Oliveira was a phenomenally talented cape-coloured South African cricketer. His fascinating journey into the Test world in England reached a climax in when the refusal of the South African government to admit him into the country triggered the boycott of the nation from sporting activities for over two decades.
Written by Arunabha Sengupta
Published: Oct 04, , AM (IST)
Edited: Oct 03, , PM (IST)
Basil D’Oliveira, born October 4, , was a phenomenally talented cape-coloured South African cricketer. His fascinating journey into the Test world in England reached a climax in when the refusal of the South African government to admit him into the country triggered the boycott of the nation from sporting activities for over two decades. Arunabha Sengupta looks back at the man who arrived in England after his best years and played 44 Tests for the country.
Setting the cat among the pigeons
&#;Oh Christ, you&#;ve put the cat among the pigeons now.&#; Seldom has a batsman been applauded with these words on reaching his hundred — even less so by the umpire. But, wh
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In early , a lot was going on in the world. Vietnamese war, the Olympics Black Power salute, Martin Luther King's assassination, humans walking on the moon, and the USSR invading the Czech Republic. Yet at the time, the leader of a country that was in geo-political turmoil and had trade sanctions was getting daily updates on how Derbyshire’s bowlers had gone up against Worcestershire’s star batter.
The South African government and their prime minister BJ Vorster wanted to know if England would select Basil D’Oliveira for their /69 to tour their nation.
And all these years later, I want to know the same thing. Should the MCC have picked Basil D’Oliveira to tour South Africa? Not because of politics, but purely on cricket.
Because this is the cricket selection that changed the world.
Cricket scorecards aren’t like other sports. They don’t give you the result, they give you the story. Other sports have , , , , , They tell you how close the game was, and the result, but not much more. They are tweets, cricket’s scorecards are novels.
You can find out who killed the butler in the billiards room with the candlest
Basil D'Oliveira: Cricket and Controversy - Softcover
Synopsis
There have been innumerable biographies of cricketers. Peter Oborne's outstanding biography of Basil D'Oliveira is something else. It brings together sport, politics and race. It is the story of how a black South African defied incredible odds and came to play cricket for England, of how a single man escaped from apartheid and came to fulfil his prodigious sporting potential. It is a story of the conquest of racial prejudice, both in South Africa and in the heart of the English sporting establishment.
The story comes to its climax in the so-called D'Oliveira Affair of , when John Vorster, the South African Prime Minister, banned the touring MCC side because of the inclusion of a black man. This episode marked the start of the twenty-year sporting isolation of South Africa that ended only with the collapse of apartheid itself.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
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