By Frank Birbalsingh
The death of Basil D'Oliveira on 19th November, 2011 recalls the career of a man who impacted the world more widely than any other cricketer, perhaps more than any other sportsman with the possible exception of Jessie Owens, the African-American sprinter whose spectacular success at the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936 offended Adolf Hitler. Hitler's Nazi creed, after all, was not very different from South African apartheid (apartness) the repugnant policy of the Whites-only National Party that instituted rigid racial segregation in South Africa in 1948. Under this policy which divided the South African population into Whites, Bantu (Africans or Blacks), Coloureds or mixed race, and Indians, D'Oliveira who was born in Signal Hill, Capetown was classified as Coloured and grew up in the poor and deprived conditions assigned to non-White South Africans who formed about eighty percent of the population, while the best living conditions were reserved for the remaining twenty percent – the Whites.
Because of his Portuguese surname, Basil's family on his father's side probably came from Madeira, unlike the majority of Coloureds who claimed Malay or Indonesian descent. Basil worked as a printer's assistant in Signal Hill, where only wasteland was available for cricket grounds and pitches, whereas Whites played on well groomed turf wickets. In circumstances of limited playing facilities and competition only among fellow non-Whites – chiefly Coloureds and Indians - Basil performed wonders as a batsman. But since by law he could not be picked for the Whites-only national, South African cricket team, he began to think that England might be the place for his talents.
Without either funds to get there, however, or English contacts in a strange land, England was fantasy, a mere dream, and the story of how his dream came true has now entered the folklore of cricket. Two of the chief magicians who made the dream possible were Damo "Benny" Bansda, an Indian sports writer and part time barman who wrote an article on Basil in the British magazine World Sports, and the legendary English cricket broadcaster John Arlott who enlisted the help of John Kay, another English journalist, to get the job of cricket professional for Basil with Middleton, a club in the Central Lancashire league. This was a totally unprecedented coup since Basil was completely unknown in England, and "had no first class cricket experience," as Arlott states in the '"Foreword" to Basil's first autobiography D'Oliveira: An Autobiography (1968.) In this autobiography Basil also writes: "He ['Benny' Bansda] was the man who above all got me to England in 1960." And Basil's second autobiography Time to Declare (1982) contains this Dedication: "To the late 'Benny' Bansda. Without his many kindnesses, I would probably still be working at a printers in Capetown." To scrape together money for Basil to travel to England in 1960 Benny Bansda and his friends raised four hundred and fifty pounds from their community in one month!
Basil's earliest days with Middleton are a horror story of playing on wet turf wickets and scoring 25 runs in his first five League games; but by the end of the 1960 season he had taken 70-odd wickets and finished top of the batting averages in the Central Lancashire League, ahead of Garry Sobers. Then, thanks to the urging of Tom Graveney, in 1964, Basil joined Worcestershire and, in 1965, in his first year playing in English county Championship matches, Worcestershire rose to become county champions. In 1966 he was picked for England and I saw his first Test appearance – against West Indies at Lords in 1966 – when we could feel an electric shock of historic anticipation as he stepped out of the pavilion and approached the wicket to bat. Not since the early 1930s had a non-white cricketer – an Indian prince – played for England! Then, with his innings just beginning to build, Basil was run out for 27 through no fault of his own. Yet this aborted knock heralded a Test career of 44 matches, 2484 runs, 5 centuries, and a batting average of 40.06; Basil also took 47 Test wickets at an average of 39.55. In addition, he played in 67 first class matches with 45 centuries, a batting average of 40.26 and a highest score of 229. He also took 551 wickets at 27.45 apiece, and was awarded the C.B.E. by the Queen.
But the centre-piece of D'Oliveira's career was the notorious incident in 1968, immediately after the Australian tour of England, when he was not selected for the England team to tour South Africa in the winter of 1968/69 immediately following. In the only two Tests that summer for which he was picked against Australia, (and questions could be asked why only two) D'Oliveira had scored a glorious innings of 87 not out that almost saved England in the First, and a magisterial 158 that took them to victory in the Fifth. But the South African Government under Prime Minister Vorster was adamant they would reject any England team that included a non-white player, just as they had previously rejected a New Zealand rugby team with Maori players. Through an intermediary they had also tried to bribe D'Oliveira by offering him a ten-year coaching job in South Africa paying forty thousand pounds which he refused. Now, pushed to the brink at a crucial selectors' meeting, they resorted to desperate means which cannot now be proved because minutes of the meeting, believe it or not, were lost or stolen.
In the event, when Tom Cartwright who had been chosen instead of D'Oliveira stood down because of illness, the selectors picked D'Oliveira, and South Africa cancelled the tour. This boosted the movement to ban South Africa from Test cricket and Olympic sports, and Mac Maharaj, Nelson Mandela's fellow prisoner on Robben Island claims: "he [D'Oliveira] became a symbol of our struggle." No one denies it was Mandela and the African National Congress who destroyed the iniquity of apartheid. But Basil D'Oliveira spread word of their struggle worldwide.