At the centre of this particular drama was Basil D’Oliveira, a South African who was classified by the apartheid regime as ‘Cape coloured’, or of mixed race, and therefore prohibited from participating in any sport alongside white South Africans. As a youngster he lived for cricket (and football) and used to climb the trees outside the Newlands Cricket Ground in Cape Town to watch the cricket. Through a combination of outrageous talent and a burning desire to succeed, D’Oliveira became captain of the non-white South African cricket team – and also played football for the non-white national team – but he became increasingly frustrated at the political barrier that prevented him from representing his country at the highest level. Left with no alternative, D’Oliveira decided to emigrate to England, helped to no small extent by the cricket writer and broadcaster, John Arlott, to whom D’Oliveira had written in 1958, asking for help in finding a role as a professional in one of England’s leagues. This unlikely connection was forged through D’Oliveira listening to Arlott’s legendary radio commentary. ‘His voice and the words he spoke convinced me he was a nice, compassionate man,’ he said.
Arlott managed to secure D’Oliveira a contract for the summer of 1960 with Middleton Cricket Club in the Central Lancashire League. He subsequently topped the League’s batting averages that season, arousing the interest of Worcestershire County Cricket Club, for whom he first appeared in first-class cricket in 1964. Throughout, D’Oliveira maintained that he had been born in 1934, which by most people’s reckoning took at least three years off his true age. Indeed, his most likely date of birth was 4 October 1931, but D’Oliveira knew that he would be considered dangerously past his sell-by date had he revealed to Worcestershire that he was approaching 33 when he made his début, rather than 29, and that he would surely have had little chance of making his début for England against West Indies in 1966 had the selectors known he was in his thirty-fifth year. This was just another intriguing subplot in the life of a man whose name will always be linked with the eventual downfall of apartheid.
D’Oliveira’s Test career began promisingly, being run out for 27 in his first innings and picking up a couple of wickets with his gentle swing bowling, which was to become surprisingly successful at breaking stubborn partnerships. He scored two half-centuries in his second Test, which England lost, and a battling 88 in his third, at Headingley, where West Indies recorded an even more emphatic victory, this time by an innings and 55 runs, to set up their 3–1 series victory. D’Oliveira’s first century for England came the following June in the First Test against India at Headingley. A further 81 not out against Pakistan later that summer helped him to become one of Wisden’s five cricketers of the year for 1967, and these performances took him to West Indies for the winter tour.
More than five thousand miles away in Pretoria, the South African authorities had been monitoring D’Oliveira’s development and knew they had a problem. England, travelling under the auspices of MCC in those days, were due to tour South Africa the following winter and the interior minister, Pieter le Roux, had already warned MCC that D’Oliveira would not be allowed into South Africa if he were chosen in the squad.
In the event, the West Indies tour did not go well for D’Oliveira either on or off the field. He played in all five Tests but passed fifty only once and, on his first tour, it soon became clear to his team-mates that Dolly could become quite fiery when he had consumed a drink or two. There were further political developments, too, with the former MCC president Lord Cobham assuring the South Africans that MCC would do everything in its power to ensure that the winter’s tour went ahead, and the pressure was ratcheted up a notch when John Vorster, the prime minister of South Africa, warned that the tour would be cancelled if D’Oliveira were selected.
Despite his indifferent form, D’Oliveira was selected for the first Ashes Test of 1968, and although Australia won the match, he top-scored in the second innings with an unbeaten 87. It was when he was replaced by Colin Milburn for the following Test, to make way for a third fast bowler, that the first whiff of suspicion of a possible political intervention was detected. MCC secretary Billy Griffith contacted D’Oliveira and urged him to rule himself out of the South Africa tour. Griffith also suggested, absurdly, that D’Oliveira might make himself available for South Africa instead. In July, with D’Oliveira now out of the England team, MCC approached thirty players to check their availability for the tour – but not D’Oliveira.
Although the Ashes were already lost, England needed to win the Fifth and final Test against Australia to draw the series. Roger Prideaux, who had scored 64 in the first innings of the previous Test at Headingley, was forced out of the match through injury and D’Oliveira was called up. However, he was the only player not to be asked on the eve of the game by Doug Insole, the chairman of selectors, to declare his availability for the tour to South Africa.
The Oval Test of 1968 was a remarkable game of cricket in its own right. England set Australia 352 to win and, just before lunch on the final day, Australia were heading towards defeat at 85 for five when a torrential storm flooded the ground. The sun reappeared shortly afterwards and the groundstaff – helped by volunteers from the crowd who were armed with brooms, buckets and towels – set about drying the outfield. At 4.45, play restarted with only seventy-five minutes remaining.
The captain, Colin Cowdrey, used all his frontline bowlers, but John Inverarity and Barry Jarman could not be shifted. With barely forty minutes before stumps, Cowdrey turned to the great partnership-breaker, D’Oliveira, who duly bowled Jarman in his second over. Derek Underwood, revelling in the rapidly drying conditions, finished the contest by taking the last four Australian wickets in twenty-seven balls with every fielder crouched around the bat.
All of that would surely be enough to make the match memorable. But this game had gained a significance of its own when, in England’s vital first innings, D’Oliveira scored 158 from 325 balls. It was not a flawless innings – far from it. In fact he was dropped four times. But this surely was a performance, played under great personal pressure, that demanded selection for the winter tour that followed. However, as we have already established, these were far from normal circumstances.
The selectors convened at eight o’clock on 27 August, the evening the Test finished, and the meeting closed at two o’clock the next morning. Of the five selectors – Insole, Cowdrey, Don Kenyon, Alec Bedser and Peter May – only Kenyon is reported to have supported D’Oliveira’s selection. Curiously, the minutes of the meeting went missing and the chairman, Insole, explained D’Oliveira’s exclusion by saying that he was regarded as a batsman rather than an all-rounder, and that there were better players in the squad.
These days, with Twitter and other social media, reaction to the news would have been fast and furious. Sporting issues rarely made the front pages back in 1968, when press coverage was rather more sedate and considered, but the Reverend David Sheppard, who played twenty-two Tests for England, stated that the MCC had made a ‘dreadful mistake’. This galvanized members of the private club to force a meeting on 6 September and the D’Oliveira affair gripped the nation, with the News of the World announcing that they would send D’Oliveira to South Africa to report on the Test series for them.
The next twist of fate involved Tom Cartwright, the softly spoken seam bowler who had been selected for the tour despite having a shoulder injury. He appeared to have proven his fitness by bowling ten overs in a county match for Warwickshire, only to withdraw from the touring squad two days later. D’Oliveira was named as his replacement.
The reaction from South Africa was immediate. Prime Minister Vorster declared that the MCC team had been selected along political lines and that his country would not welcome it. The South Africans pointed to the fact that D’Oliveira had first been considered as a batsman, but then replaced an injured bowler – although, with seven first-class hundreds to his name, Cartwright was more of an all-rounder than purely a bowler. ‘The MCC team is not the team of the MCC but of the anti-apartheid movement,’ Vorster announced deliberately in his harsh, guttural Afrikaans accent.
What is almost certainly true is that D’Oliveira was not the selectors’ first choice as replacement for Cartwright. There was his poor tour report from the previous winter to