LONDON, (Reuters) – Although he did not speak about it often, my father regarded bringing Basil D’Oliveira to England as the single act he was most proud of in his life.
It was an act that was to help bring an end to apartheid in South Africa, a system my father first witnessed while commentating on the 1948-49 England tour of the country.
My father slipped away from his wealthy hosts in the white suburbs of Johannesburg and in the black townships saw a poverty he had never before witnessed. He found evil a system that could deny a man the vote and condemn him to a life of poverty just because of the colour of his skin.
He was thus probably bound to be receptive when, in the late 1950s, he started receiving polite letters from a mixed-race South African cricketer he had never met called Basil D’Oliveira.
In his autobiography Time to Declare, Basil said he decided to write to my father because “his voice and the words he spoke convinced me he was a nice, compassionate man”.
Basil had scored 80 centuries in nine years of non-white cricket and had once taken nine for two with the ball. But county club secretaries would turn him down for a place saying: “Yes, but against unknown opposition on matting wickets.”
My father would point out that as a Cape Coloured in South Africa it was certain to be against “unknown opposition” unless they gave him a chance. Through my father’s persuasion a journalist colleague called John Kay eventually got Basil a contract as one of the professionals for the Middleton Cricket Club in the Lancashire League.
Basil had a difficult start. At first he scored few runs in the cold and on the totally different pitches of Lancashire. The story might have ended there had his talent not won through.
POLITICAL FOOTBALL
My father saw his efforts rewarded beyond all expectations when, after a few seasons playing for Worcestershire, Basil was picked for England against West Indies in 1966.
In the winter of 1968 England were due to tour South Africa. The South African authorities had already made it clear through roundabout contacts that they would not be happy to receive an England side containing a Cape Coloured South African.
Despite making 87 not out in the second innings of the first test against Australia that year, Basil was dropped.
By the final test against Australia Basil had still not won back his place but, at the last moment, Roger Prideaux pulled out and Basil was chosen to replace him. He scored 158 and took a crucial wicket in the Australian second innings but still was not picked for the team to tour South Africa.
My father knew what was going on and was angry but he also knew that the facts would speak for themselves. Stoked by his pieces in The Guardian, by newspaper articles by other journalists and politicians, a fire of complaint was raging and, when Tom Cartwright said he was unfit to tour, Basil was chosen to replace him. South African Prime Minister John Vorster described Basil as “a political football” and refused to accept the side. The tour was cancelled. Basil wept at the injustice when he was left out of the side. He kept a dignified silence during the political rows and campaigning that followed but he was with the anti-apartheid campaigners because it was he who once again was being stopped from playing because of the colour of his skin.
Before the South Africans were due in England 18 months later, Peter Hain’s ‘Stop the South Africa Tour’ campaign was in full swing and my father told the BBC that he did not wish to commentate on the tour.
Eventually the Labour government cancelled the South African tour because of fears of public disorder and South Africa’s long period of ostracism from international sport had begun. What effect other countries’ refusal to play South Africa had on public opinion in a sports-mad country we shall never know, but it must certainly have had an impact.
My father’s role in helping to get Basil invited to England in 1960 must surely have been one link in the long chain of events that resulted in Nelson Mandela’s release from Robben Island 30 years later and the abolition of apartheid in 1991.
It was one of the few things that still brought him pleasure during the chronic ill health he endured before he died in December of the same year.