Cape crusader
Basil D'Oliveira © Getty Images There is nothing like being the centre of an international crisis to prove a cricketer's true mettle
10-Apr-2005
Christopher Sandford pays tribute to Basil D'Oliveira, who turns 70 this month
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D'Oliveira gave rein to his natural ball-playing skills in the leprous back streets and wastes of his Cape township in the 1940s. Tall, muscular, almost freakishly strong in the arms, he developed into a murderous but essentially orthodox batsman and a slow-medium bowler with a textbook side-on action. Hearing of the prodigy on a private tour of South Africa, John Arlott
arranged for him to play for Middleton in the Central Lancashire League, though
neither man seriously thought that, at 28, D'Oliveira had real hope of a career in first-class cricket, let alone in Tests.
That all changed in March 1962 when, on a pre-season tour of Rhodesia, Tom
Graveney, recently transferred to Worcestershire after a venomous row at
Gloucester, watched D'Oliveira pound 51 off a top-class attack in four or five overs. Graveney approached him that evening in the bar (second only to the field, in those days, as Dolly's natural habitat). 'How old are you?' asked Graveney. The muscles in D'Oliveira's face twitched; he may well have gulped. `Twenty-five,' he said. As soon as Graveney got home to Worcester he made a point of mentioning D'Oliveira to the county chairman, Sir George Dowry. How old
was he? `About 30,' said Graveney.
Basil, then actually 32, made his debut for Worcester's Second XI in 1964. It was down to luck and, increasingly, his all-round prowess that the county were just approaching their peak: back-to-back Champions in 1964-65, runners-up in 1966. Suddenly D'Oliveira was a middle-aged new boy who batted and bowled as if
compensating for lost time. He and Graveney - a feast of batting contrasts,
Tom's natural restraint co-existing with Basil's cold-blooded homicide-were
the most prolific scorers in England. Both were selected for the Second Test
against West Indies at Lord's in June 1966. For Graveney it was the end of
three years in exile, for D'Oliveira the culmination of a fairy tale journey from township to cricket's headquarters to represent his adopted country.
Basil's Test career, which would last until 1972, was a similar case of
improbable triumph against the odds. He will be remembered more for his
fitful genius than for any Boycott-like application or consistency. D'Oliveira
had a knack of making runs when others failed - notably under Ray Illingworth in
Australia and New Zealand in 1970-71- and for taking crucial wickets, not least
that of Australia's Barry Jarman at The Oval in 1968, enabling Derek
Underwood to polish off the tail with six minutes left.
Dolly, however, was nothing if not exasperating to his many fans. He had
an indifferent time on the 1967-68 tour of the Caribbean where, not averse to
the tempting mixture of rum and sun, he was quietly taken aside and spoken
to by his captain, Colin Cowdrey. Nothing much went right for him in the
home season of 1968. Basil was brought back by England for the final Test only
because of a long injury list, and thus providentially given the chance of
winning a last-minute place in the squad to tour South Africa due to be chosen
immediately stumps were drawn.
What happened at The Oval that last week of August is history. Cowdrey won
the toss, England batted and D'Oliveira (after being dropped on 31) scored a
superb 158. In one of the most gripping finishes in the history of Ashes Tests, the home side won in the dying minutes, levelling the series and providing yet
another plot twist in Basil's rags-to-riches story. It seemed inevitable that selection for the tour of South Africa would crown the most dramatic comeback in cricket history since Compton had returned from near paralysis to top-score, also in the final Test against Australia, a dozen years earlier.
What happened instead can be quickly recalled: D'Ohveira's sensational omission;
the explosion in the Press, some of which divined a conspiracy between the British and South African governments; the raised voices of MPs; the mass resignations from MCC; the formation of a protest group under the former England captain David Sheppard; the later announcement that, because of Tom Cartwright's injury, Dolly would tour after all; the South African president's refusal `to accept a team thrust upon us' by the anti-apartheid movement; the melodramatic flight to London by members of the South African Cricket Board; and finally, a month after the original selection, MCC's announcement that since their side was
unwelcome the tour was off.
`The Affair' was, in a way, a useful experience for Dolly. It showed him the
more fanatical extremes on both sides of the apartheid debate, and generally
turned him from being a happy-go-lucky court jester into someone vividly
familiar with the term `political football'. Years later, the one thing
about the affair not disputed by any of the parties concerned was that Basil
himself had behaved with dignity throughout the whole business, where
others might have succumbed to the attention. Literally overnight he became
a global celebrity, spoken of in the same breath as a Luther King or a
Mandela as a defining symbol of the racial equality struggle. People who had
never been near a cricket match suddenly knew the name and, above all, the skin colour of Basil D'Oliveira.
The hastily arranged substitute tour of Pakistan in 1968-69 was a farce, played out against a backdrop of rioting students, fickle umpires and hardened
mud pitches. On a wicket at Dacca where the likes of Cowdrey, Graveney
and Keith Fletcher barely troubled the scorers, Basil flailed an almost sadistic
114 not out. No English batsman would so utterly dominate an innings again
until Ian Botham single-handedly demoralised the Australians at Headingley and Old Trafford in 1981.
Dolly played on until the mid-1970s and his own mid-40s, including a famous twilight knock of 47 in the 1973 Benson and Hedges Cup Final defeat to
Kent; futile but so full of brutal, tracer-like shots that those with long memories sighed of Hammond. In all he played 44 Tests, with an average marginally over 40, and hit a total of 43 first-class hundreds. Old men still talk of what those figures might have been had Basil started his career a decade or so earlier.
Everything that he did, on and off the pitch, was done with character. D'Oliveira was never anonymous. Even when he was out of sorts, the eye was
drawn to him as it somehow was not with more efficient, nondescript players.
Whether swinging hard against the fastest bowling, appealing lustily or
bringing off improbable catches, Dolly lived well above his technical income.
He retired approaching his 50th birthday and became Worcestershire's first - and
highly successful - coach. His career was not a triumph only of skill, it was
more a triumph of character, perseverance, example. D'Oliveira gave
pleasure to tens of thousands who watched him in England, but
something rarer to millions - more who followed his Cinderella career from the
shanties and townships he left behind in South Africa.
To them he meant hope.