Basil D'Oliveira
Created | Updated Oct 30, 2008
WORK IN PROGRESS - collaboration with Skankyrich
The South African system of racial segregation, apartheid, will long be remembered as a terrible injustice to humanity. South Africa had been a racially segregated nation - as a legacy of its colonial past - before apartheid was introduced. Prior to apartheid this segregation was largely informal.
Then, in 1948, in the white-dominated world of South African politics, the Nationalist party came into power. Concerned that the increasingly vocal non-white majority would cause damage to the white culture (and also reduce the huge advantage in wealth the whites had), the party set about 'protecting' this 'culture' by implementing a strict, institutionalised system of racial segregation.
Non-whites now had very few rights. Every male over the age of 16 had to carry a passbook at all times. If they did not have it with them, they would be arrested. The system extended beyond blacks and whites. Malays, Bantus, blacks, coloureds: all were kept apart from each other.
Youth
It was into this tortured society that one man named Basil D'Oliveira was born. The son of a tailor, he grew up in a Boer camp beneath Table Mountain, in the backstreets of Cape Town. His skin was pale, but he was classified as coloured. [What was his racial background?] He was a keen sportsman, and especially loved cricket and football. It is tragic, therefore, that his racial classification prevented him from playing sport at the very highest level for so long.
At the age of 16 D'Oliveira left school to work in printing. He was a Grade 2 Machine Binder. It was said that if you were a Grade 1 Machine Binder, you were white. Meanwhile he continued to hone his sporting skills. He first played cricket on a street corner, with a post acting as the stumps.
Cricket was a glue that bound coloured communities in South Africa. Families would gather to watch games on the weekend and bring food to share. It was more than just a sport. On Sundays, occasional illegal matches used to take place between the best white players and the best black players.
Basil played most of his cricket at the local Greenpoint cricket ground. It was a very busy place, with over a dozen clubs playing there, but the pitch itself was in a terrible state. So D'Oliveira learned on hard, stony, rough and uneven pitches. These conditions were extremely difficult for batting in, meaning he never had it easy during his formative years. He was helped by his father, who encouraged him to really stretch the limits of his abilities. 'Prove to me how good you are,' he would say.
An Exile in His Own Country
The D'Oliveiras had a strong association with St. Augustine's Cricket Club. It was a club for Christian blacks - as opposed to those blacks who had not converted from their own African religions - captained by Basil's father. Basil himself played himself into the hearts of black South Africans. Only coloured newspapers reported his cricketing (and also footballing) achievements. He was a hard-hitting, commanding batsman, who once scored 200 runs in just 65 minutes - an incredibly fast scoring rate. In one eight-ball over, he hit the bowler for seven sixes and a four. He was a phenomenon in coloured cricket during the late '50s, and drew comparisons with the greatest batsman of them all, the legendard Sir Donald Bradman. He scored over 80 centuries in coloured club cricket, and backed up his batting genuis with bowling that was rated above useful.
Meanwhile, in 1956, the apartheid regime tightened its grip. Its opponents, including Nelson Mandela, were prosecuted for treason. In the end they were acquited.
In 1958(?), he, captained a non-white team touring Kenya and played two unofficial 'Test' matches, winning both. The team was packed with talent, and many of them would have walked into the official (white) South African team. But it was not to be. Apartheid took away fifteen years of his cricketing career. He never played cricket at the famous Newlands international ground in Cape Town. Even when he went to watch, he had to do so from a separate section of the stands. It was known as 'the cage' because it was fenced off. Needless to say, everyone in 'the cage' supported the visiting teams against their native country.
And yet Basil was not completely disheartened. As the great star of coloured cricket, he hatched an ambitious plan: to invite the dominant team of the era, the West Indies, to come and play his talented non-white team. The 'Windies' were the ideal choice. Here was a group of small nations with almost entirely black populations who were almost invincible on the cricket field. Their fast bowlers were fearsome, their batsmen aggressive, their domination complete. It would have been a great embarrassment for the Apartheid regime if they had visited. Remember this was at a time when South Africa only played teams of white players.
It was a great plan, but it never happened. Political pressures caused the unofficial tour to be cancelled, and yet Basil still continued in his attempts to make cricket part of the struggle, and to use his sport to help the oppressed.
Escape
1960 was a seismic year. Basil married his childhood sweetheart Naomi. Then, in February, he received a letter from one John Arlott of England. Arlott was a freelance writer, and was especially passionate about cricket. He would become one of the most familiar voices in England thanks to his celebrated commentary on BBC Radio 3's Test Match Special programme. He was also a vocal opponent of apartheid. He visited South Africa and, when completing the immigration paperwork, wrote down as his race: 'human'.
D'Oliveira and Arlott had been in correspondence for some time, since Arlott had first heard about the legendary coloured cricketer. He was determined to help Basil, and saw his cricket was being stifled in South Africa. So he hatched a plan to bring him over to England to play cricket in the first-class domestic competition there. As Basil would later say, 'I owe everything I have to John Arlott.'
