Photo: UK Daily Mail
A couple of weeks back South African cricket legend Basil D’Oliviera passed away, presumably from complications due to the Parkinson’s disease from which he had suffered for many years. D’Oliviera is best known for his centrality in the crisis that bore his name, the “D’Oliviera Affair.” Unable to play cricket at the highest levels in Apartheid South Africa, D’Oliviera moved to England where he made the national team, starkly revealing the absurdity of Apartheid sport and destroying any argument that black athletes could not compete in the elite ranks. In 1968 when England’s cricket team was set to tour South Africa. Prime Minister John Vorster refused to allow D’Oliviera to play in South Africa. England withdrew from the tour, accelerating South Africa’s isolation from the world of sport.
Less well known is that a few years earlier D’Oliviera led the non-racial South African Cricket Board of Control (Sacboc) national team on a tour of East Africa. While the SACBOC team did not include any white players, who of their own volition refused to participate in Sacboc, D’Oliviera’s squad was the most representative in the history of the sport in South Africa until the end of sporting isolation in the 1990s.