Ashwell Prince can thank Basil D’Oliveira

For most of the current generation of Indians, racism is a thing of the past. For most South Africans, it is not.

So when Ashwell Prince, a coloured person, was appointed to skipper their cricket team on Wednesday, it was a day to rejoice. Quotas are still part of league cricket in South Africa and Prince’s appointment is a sign that, perhaps, black cricketers have now reached a level where quotas are not really necessary any more.

But this wasn’t the case way back in the 1960s when black cricketers did not have the right to represent South Africa. The current generation of coloured cricketers owe their present status to one man — Basil D’Oliveira.

D’Oliveira was a mixed-race (‘coloured’) South African living in Cape Town. There were thriving non-white cricket and soccer leagues in the Cape and he was captain of the national non-white South African cricket team representing coloured, Asian and black people. He also played soccer for the non-white national side. But because one had to be white to play for South Africa, he realised he had to go to England.

A community fundraising drive helped pay for his airfare in 1960, when he arrived to join the Lancashire League Club, Middleton. D’Oliveira soon managed to impress by the sheer dint of his cricketing talent.

By 1964, he had worked his way into the Worcestershire side and became a British citizen. By 1966, he was a key member of the English team. In 1967, he toured West Indies with the MCC. His performance was not impressive which resulted in his omission from the English side against Australia. He was recalled to play in the fifth Test at the Oval and responded with a 158.

Naturally, it was assumed that he was a certainty for the tour to South Africa in 1968. D’Oliveira was top of the English batting averages in the just-completed series against Australia, and second in the bowling. But he was left out and the decision provoked a storm of anger.

“No one of open mind will believe that he was left out for valid cricketing reasons,” John Arlott wrote. It was assumed that the MCC had bowed to South African pressure. But then things became complicated when the player selected in his place, Tom Cartwright, withdrew from the squad, citing an injury. The selectors now felt obliged to include D’Oliveira in the team, even though they had been informed that BJ Vorster, the South African Prime Minister, had said that the tour would be cancelled if he was chosen.

Vorster said that “the team with Basil D’Oliveira was not a team of the MCC but a team of the Anti-Apartheid Movement”.

The South African PM also cancelled the tour unless England’s selectors did a U-turn and dropped D’Oliveira. The selectors stood firm and the tour was cancelled.

The entire affair simply became known as the ‘Basil D’Oliveira affair’ and the entire controversy helped publicise the struggle against apartheid.

“It was awful, but in a strange way I came out of it a stronger man,” Basil D’Oliveira later said.

But then, as if nothing had happened, the MCC, just four months later, invited South Africa to tour England in 1970. The public response against the tour forced the tour to be cancelled. The events led to South Africa’s boycott by the sporting fraternity, that stood until 1991, and eventually paved the way for the fall of apartheid. The D’Oliveira affair may stand forgotten now but it is one of the great human interest stories of sport.

Such is D’Oliveira’s status among South Africans that despite having never represented South Africa, he was nominated as one of the country’s cricketers of the 20th century. In 2004, a perpetual trophy was struck for Test series between England and South Africa, and named the Basil D’Oliveira Trophy.

D’Oliveira didn’t start playing Test cricket until he was 34 - that’s the age at which Sir Gary Sobers retired. In that sense, he was always battling, not just race, but the steady toll of time too. Had he been discovered earlier, he might have taken his rightful place as one of the greats.