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That's the way, four runs. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:07 | |
Not a bad chance, I think, for everybody to meet England's latest cap - Basil D'Oliveira. | 0:00:07 | 0:00:12 | |
APPLAUSE Hello, we got a crowd round here. | 0:00:12 | 0:00:16 | |
Very soon you get the idea of what the people in these parts think | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
of Basil D'Oliveira and his cricket for Worcestershire and England. | 0:00:22 | 0:00:26 | |
This is the cricketing story of a lifetime, it tells of how one man and one innings lead ultimately | 0:00:26 | 0:00:34 | |
to the downfall of a brutal political regime. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:37 | |
The political fall-out from that innings resonates to this day. | 0:00:41 | 0:00:46 | |
Tell us about your family in Cape Town. | 0:00:46 | 0:00:50 | |
I don't think there is much to tell, our particular family is cross-bred | 0:00:50 | 0:00:54 | |
between Portuguese and South African. | 0:00:54 | 0:00:57 | |
That's a fine shot. That was a good stroke and it is four runs. | 0:01:01 | 0:01:03 | |
He's played a magnificent innings. | 0:01:03 | 0:01:06 | |
That innings, made in 1968, made an overwhelming case | 0:01:06 | 0:01:10 | |
for D'Oliveira's inclusion in the forthcoming England tour of South Africa. | 0:01:10 | 0:01:15 | |
The problem for the selectors was that he was racially classified | 0:01:17 | 0:01:21 | |
as coloured in South Africa and was therefore forbidden from playing with whites. | 0:01:21 | 0:01:26 | |
Indeed, D'Oliveira had been forced to leave the country of his birth | 0:01:29 | 0:01:32 | |
and change his nationality in order to play Test cricket at all. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:37 | |
Our policy is one which is called by an Afrikaans word - apartheid, | 0:01:38 | 0:01:44 | |
and I am afraid that has been misunderstood so often. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:49 | |
It could just as easily and perhaps much better be described | 0:01:49 | 0:01:54 | |
as a policy of good neighbourliness - | 0:01:54 | 0:01:57 | |
accepting that there are differences between people. | 0:01:57 | 0:02:01 | |
It was that racist policy which D'Oliveira's cricketing genius would fundamentally challenge. | 0:02:01 | 0:02:07 | |
Basil D'Oliveira, now aged 72, has returned to Cape Town for the Cricket World Cup in South Africa. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:26 | |
What's the score - I can't see that far. | 0:02:26 | 0:02:29 | |
For the black man he is a hero to us. | 0:02:29 | 0:02:33 | |
Today we can say we can be proud because of Basil D'Oliveira. | 0:02:33 | 0:02:37 | |
-We are sitting with him watching the World Cup. -CROWD CHEERS | 0:02:37 | 0:02:44 | |
Because his 158 against Australia changed the path of history. | 0:02:44 | 0:02:48 | |
The end of a really superb innings from D'Oliveira. | 0:02:50 | 0:02:53 | |
-As you walked back to the pavilion at the Oval... -YES! -..that was what you were thinking? | 0:02:53 | 0:02:57 | |
Yes. I'm in again, I'm here. | 0:02:57 | 0:03:00 | |
I've got to be picked. | 0:03:00 | 0:03:02 | |
That innings placed the English cricket selectors in the eye of a political storm. | 0:03:02 | 0:03:08 | |
And when you come to select the side to go to South Africa will you allow | 0:03:08 | 0:03:11 | |
yourself to be influenced by anything except purely cricketing considerations? | 0:03:11 | 0:03:15 | |
No, we've got to sit down in about 45 minutes' time, in fact, | 0:03:15 | 0:03:20 | |
and pick the best team in England which will beat South Africa. | 0:03:20 | 0:03:24 | |
And then the plot began to unfold. | 0:03:24 | 0:03:27 | |
I was set up - they had that golden opportunity. | 0:03:27 | 0:03:31 | |
Only now is Basil D'Oliveira able to tell the full story of the scandal | 0:03:31 | 0:03:36 | |
which led ultimately to the fall of apartheid - a plot that implicates | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
the politicians and sports administrators alike in one of the great betrayals of modern sport. | 0:03:40 | 0:03:46 | |
The story begins in the backstreets of Cape Town. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:55 | |
And how did your cricket start? | 0:03:55 | 0:03:58 | |
Like most people, you take a bat and a ball, | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
you use sticks for wickets or a tin can and away you go, you play. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:05 | |
Basil D'Oliveira was born in 1931, the son of a tailor, and he grew up | 0:04:08 | 0:04:13 | |
in the Bokaap on the slopes of Signal Hill below Table Mountain. | 0:04:13 | 0:04:18 | |
It is that one. | 0:04:18 | 0:04:21 | |
I have come back. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:24 | |
Everything evolved around the word called sport, | 0:04:27 | 0:04:31 | |
soccer or cricket, those were the two main sports we thrived on. | 0:04:31 | 0:04:34 | |
At 4 o'clock we all meet in the street and that is when the game starts taking place. | 0:04:37 | 0:04:42 | |
And that wall, that is still there today, that was a practice wall | 0:04:42 | 0:04:46 | |
for throwing balls and taking catches. | 0:04:46 | 0:04:50 | |
-So this is the post you would play against? -Yes. | 0:04:50 | 0:04:53 | |
-When you were a schoolboy? -I smashed everybody. | 0:04:53 | 0:04:58 | |
At that stage he was already making a ransom, played street cricket, | 0:04:58 | 0:05:03 | |
windows on both sides so you must always play straight. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:08 | |
Six over this wire, that would be a six, that'll be a four. | 0:05:08 | 0:05:12 | |
That one up there would be sixes - a big hit! | 0:05:12 | 0:05:16 | |
People of all different races, different allegiances stayed in the same ground. | 0:05:16 | 0:05:24 | |
In 1948 the National Party is elected in one of the most significant political developments | 0:05:26 | 0:05:33 | |
in South African history because the National Party after that election | 0:05:33 | 0:05:38 | |
which establishes apartheid. | 0:05:38 | 0:05:40 | |
'48, '49, '50 had passed the major legislation which separates | 0:05:40 | 0:05:45 | |
the entire population according to race and which basically takes away | 0:05:45 | 0:05:49 | |
from all black and non-white people what few rights they previously enjoyed. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:55 | |
Dr HF Verwoerd, Minister of Native Affairs, later Prime Minister, left nothing to chance. | 0:05:55 | 0:06:02 | |
For the whites of South Africa, apartheid brought an affluent way of life and great prosperity. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:09 | |
D'Oliveira himself was 17 when apartheid was introduced. | 0:06:09 | 0:06:12 | |
Though light-skinned, his family was classified coloured | 0:06:12 | 0:06:15 | |
and so the world into which he had been born was utterly changed. | 0:06:15 | 0:06:19 | |
The white area is over there and the coloured area is over there. | 0:06:19 | 0:06:25 | |
That's right. | 0:06:25 | 0:06:26 | |
'And this racial classification even had an impact on the young D'Oliveira's cricket.' | 0:06:26 | 0:06:32 | |
You shouldn't be on the street at night, playing cricket under the lamp post was not allowed by law. | 0:06:32 | 0:06:38 | |
He went just whap - down, | 0:06:38 | 0:06:40 | |
opened the Black Mariah, boom, and locked it up. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:46 | |
For non-whites, everyday life was rigidly controlled by the new nationalist government. | 0:06:46 | 0:06:52 | |
Because the colour of your skin is black, if you are over 16, | 0:06:52 | 0:06:57 | |
you had to have a special identity card called a passport | 0:06:57 | 0:07:01 | |
and if you didn't have it with you, you would be arrested. | 0:07:01 | 0:07:06 | |
We were all petrified of them, the whole bloody lot, all of us. | 0:07:06 | 0:07:10 | |
They were very aggressive people. | 0:07:10 | 0:07:13 | |
In order to play cricket, | 0:07:13 | 0:07:15 | |
I had to move from here. | 0:07:15 | 0:07:18 | |
Let's walk around there and I will show you where. | 0:07:18 | 0:07:20 | |
Over there, behind them. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:22 | |
He said that's just not right. | 0:07:24 | 0:07:28 | |
These people aren't better than us and I said, "Bugger them, we will get in there one day." | 0:07:28 | 0:07:34 | |
And we did, in a big way. | 0:07:34 | 0:07:37 | |
The powerful weapon D'Oliveira would use to bring about change was the cricket bat. | 0:07:38 | 0:07:44 | |
In the 1950s, as a young man ambitious to become a top sportsman, | 0:07:44 | 0:07:49 | |
he would run daily to the summit of Signal Hill overlooking Cape Town. | 0:07:49 | 0:07:55 | |
-So this was freedom for you. -Yes absolutely, complete freedom, this was mine. | 0:07:55 | 0:08:00 | |
This was where you dreamt your dreams. | 0:08:00 | 0:08:03 | |
Yes, I will get there, I will get there. | 0:08:03 | 0:08:06 | |
Apartheid meant organised sport was rigidly segregated, | 0:08:06 | 0:08:11 | |
and not just between blacks and whites. | 0:08:11 | 0:08:14 | |
In our sport, the Indians played separately, | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
the Malays played separately, | 0:08:20 | 0:08:22 | |
the Coloureds played separately and the Bantus played separately. | 0:08:22 | 0:08:26 | |
We had our own social apartheid. | 0:08:26 | 0:08:28 | |
The Muslims wanted nothing to do with the Coloureds and the Coloureds wanted nothing to do | 0:08:28 | 0:08:32 | |
with the blacks, although we would say hello to one another, they had their sport and we had our sport. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:39 | |
I loved it, I adored cricket. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
I would drive myself on to make certain we would have a game of cricket. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:46 | |
Nothing was going to stop me from having a game of cricket. | 0:08:46 | 0:08:49 | |
We played at Green Point, that was our home ground, but with no facilities at all. | 0:08:49 | 0:08:54 | |
Nobody offered us anything here. | 0:08:54 | 0:08:56 | |
It was a piece of ground with gravel, no grass at all, all stone. | 0:08:56 | 0:09:00 | |
Used to come here on a Saturday afternoon, Sunday afternoon. | 0:09:00 | 0:09:04 | |
Anything between 12 and 15 clubs played cricket at Green Point. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:09 | |
-But this was THE ground? -The ground. This was the famous one. | 0:09:13 | 0:09:16 | |
This is where Basil Wooton and I played and broke, | 0:09:16 | 0:09:21 | |
at times, possibly every record that's been broken in the book. | 0:09:21 | 0:09:24 | |
St Augustine's was a club for Christian Coloureds and D'Oliveira's father was captain. | 0:09:27 | 0:09:34 | |
He taught me the fairness and honesty of the game, | 0:09:34 | 0:09:39 | |
how I should play, how hard you should try, never give up. | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
You are very gifted, | 0:09:43 | 0:09:45 | |
please don't spoil it. | 0:09:45 | 0:09:47 | |
He learned his cricket on rough dirt tracks. | 0:09:47 | 0:09:51 | |
My father and I would cut out a pitch, and roll it, water it, | 0:09:51 | 0:09:57 | |
you carry it | 0:09:57 | 0:09:59 | |
and you get to where you are now and you drop it and then you have to roll it out. | 0:09:59 | 0:10:06 | |
We get all the boulders, stones, then prove to me how good you are. | 0:10:06 | 0:10:10 | |
Dangerous it might be, but you might get a game out of it. | 0:10:12 | 0:10:16 | |
That's what we learnt on. | 0:10:25 | 0:10:28 | |
You can see the obstacles | 0:10:31 | 0:10:34 | |
that confronted this man and he still made it to the top. | 0:10:34 | 0:10:38 | |
In 1956 the notorious treason trial began. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:43 | |
Opponents of the apartheid regime were rounded up and prosecuted. | 0:10:43 | 0:10:48 | |
It was four years before Nelson Mandela and 150 other dissidents were found not guilty. | 0:10:48 | 0:10:56 | |
Whilst we were growing up in the cricketing fraternity, Basil was creating a name for himself | 0:11:00 | 0:11:05 | |
but only the coloured newspapers would carry Basil's scores in other towns. | 0:11:05 | 0:11:09 | |
Basil takes another seven wickets, Basil scores another five goals and so forth. | 0:11:09 | 0:11:14 | |
Two or three uncles of mine have played against him and they said | 0:11:14 | 0:11:19 | |
he was a genius, there has never been a non-white cricketer like him. | 0:11:19 | 0:11:23 | |
I saw him only a few times, one was 1953 in the finals, magnificent, | 0:11:25 | 0:11:30 | |
hard-hitting, they had to bend their hands, he hit the ball so hard. | 0:11:30 | 0:11:35 | |
He was commanding with effortless superiority. | 0:11:36 | 0:11:40 | |
He was the Bradman of non-white cricket in South Africa. | 0:11:40 | 0:11:44 | |
He once scored a double century in only one hour. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:47 | |
28 sixes and five fours or something, it is ridiculous. | 0:11:47 | 0:11:52 | |
He was a run-making machine. | 0:11:52 | 0:11:56 | |
In an eight-ball over he hit the chap for seven sixes and one four. | 0:11:56 | 0:12:00 | |
D'Oliveira's exploits on the cricket field made him an inspiration to his community. | 0:12:02 | 0:12:08 | |
And we can look at about 3,000 or 4,000 people at the match. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:12 | |
Cricket was a social force - a social glue which gathered people together on a weekend. | 0:12:12 | 0:12:19 | |
People would go all out, they would pack their picnic baskets, the women | 0:12:19 | 0:12:24 | |
would come on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon with all the food | 0:12:24 | 0:12:27 | |
and everything would be laid out. It wasn't just the game that counted, it was the social occasion, | 0:12:27 | 0:12:34 | |
and of course cricket lasts all day, not like football, | 0:12:34 | 0:12:39 | |
or rugby, where often after 90 minutes people go home. You have a long time to socialise. | 0:12:39 | 0:12:45 | |
Here's the bowler coming in now. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
-Are you local? -Local, yes. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:52 | |
What is your job in the team then? | 0:12:52 | 0:12:54 | |
Batsman, number four. | 0:12:54 | 0:12:58 | |
What was your score? | 0:12:58 | 0:13:00 | |
-101, not out. -A hundred man! | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
That is good news. | 0:13:03 | 0:13:04 | |
Easy, isn't it. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:06 | |
-What is your highest score? -250. | 0:13:09 | 0:13:11 | |
-Sure, against who? -Yorkshire. | 0:13:11 | 0:13:14 | |
And for the international? | 0:13:14 | 0:13:15 | |
-160. -Against what country? | 0:13:15 | 0:13:18 | |
-Australia. -Sure. | 0:13:18 | 0:13:21 | |
More than 50 years on, D'Oliveira remains a legend at St Augustine's. | 0:13:21 | 0:13:26 | |
Good to see you, take care of yourself. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:28 | |
Mr D'Oliveira, we would like a photo of you and us ladies, | 0:13:32 | 0:13:37 | |
can we take one? | 0:13:37 | 0:13:39 | |
Look, we all knew what the laws of the land were. | 0:13:39 | 0:13:42 | |
On Sundays, the best of the black players would play against the best | 0:13:42 | 0:13:45 | |
-of the white players, although it was illegal. But they nevertheless did it. -All the whites we played against. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:51 | |
We would hide behind grounds to keep it away from the police, and we'd pray the police wouldn't stop it. | 0:13:51 | 0:13:59 | |
These matches were stopped, they couldn't play against one another | 0:13:59 | 0:14:04 | |
and I must say that our boys did well against the white clubs. | 0:14:04 | 0:14:10 | |
-Were you ever allowed to play on the white ground? -Only when they invited us...and you had to be thankful. | 0:14:10 | 0:14:17 | |
Small mercies, but you're thankful for it. | 0:14:17 | 0:14:20 | |
This great cricketer left school at 16 to work in the printing trade. | 0:14:20 | 0:14:25 | |
When I knew Basil, he was 18 years old, he was a Grade II machine minder. | 0:14:25 | 0:14:31 | |
If you were a Grade I machine minder you had a white skin. | 0:14:31 | 0:14:34 | |
Everybody loved him for what he was and he was so good as a cricketer, he was a natural. | 0:14:34 | 0:14:41 | |
If Basil came to bat, | 0:14:41 | 0:14:44 | |
we were all, how would I say... subdued, | 0:14:44 | 0:14:50 | |
knowing here comes a man that can score runs. | 0:14:50 | 0:14:53 | |
He'd take command of a situation, that was his determination. | 0:14:53 | 0:14:58 | |
From the first ball, | 0:14:58 | 0:15:00 | |
he could tear you apart, he could pierce the field, | 0:15:00 | 0:15:05 | |
put the ball through the gaps. | 0:15:05 | 0:15:08 | |
But while D'Oliveira was the most gifted cricketer of his generation the tragedy is that in his prime, | 0:15:08 | 0:15:15 | |
his colour meant he could never be selected to play for his own country. | 0:15:15 | 0:15:20 | |
Beautiful to watch him play, isn't it? | 0:15:26 | 0:15:28 | |
Great shot. Great shot. | 0:15:31 | 0:15:33 | |
D'Oliveira's sporting achievements embodied the hopes of a non-white majority in South Africa. | 0:15:48 | 0:15:55 | |
My proudest moment would have been when I saw Basil come out with a cricket bat out of that pavilion | 0:15:55 | 0:16:02 | |
at Newlands, | 0:16:02 | 0:16:03 | |
which he deserved. | 0:16:03 | 0:16:05 | |
The law, however, prohibited it. | 0:16:05 | 0:16:07 | |
Instead of playing, he was only allowed to watch Test cricket at Newlands, | 0:16:07 | 0:16:12 | |
-and even that from the Coloured enclosure. -That's class, man. | 0:16:12 | 0:16:18 | |
We sat on the right-hand side between Z and Y. | 0:16:18 | 0:16:22 | |
We could only sit there a little bit. That was known as the cage. | 0:16:22 | 0:16:26 | |
-Why? -It was fenced off and we could only sit there. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:30 | |
Make it look so easy, don't they? | 0:16:33 | 0:16:35 | |
In that area everyone was anti-South Africa and pro any visiting teams. | 0:16:35 | 0:16:41 | |
We supported any incoming teams, never South Africa. | 0:16:41 | 0:16:45 | |
You needed to bring them out of that area. Now today you come and watch this. Look, magnificent. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:53 | |
When they got him out, there was joy. | 0:17:10 | 0:17:14 | |
-Well played! -APPLAUSE | 0:17:14 | 0:17:19 | |
The fact is that D'Oliveira was a phenomenon during the 1950s, | 0:17:23 | 0:17:27 | |
scoring over 80 centuries in so-called non-white cricket. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:31 | |
In 1958 Basil was made captain of the first non-white South African cricket team. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:40 | |
The white men still only believe that they played cricket, no black ever played cricket. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:45 | |
He successfully led the tour to East Africa. | 0:17:45 | 0:17:48 | |
His non-white team played three unofficial Tests. | 0:17:48 | 0:17:53 | |
He was the captain of our side and we beat Kenya hands down here | 0:17:53 | 0:17:56 | |
and then we went to Kenya and we beat them there too. | 0:17:56 | 0:18:00 | |
During that period there were about eight or nine non-white cricketers | 0:18:15 | 0:18:19 | |
who would have made the South African side on merit. Basil would have kept the game on level. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:26 | |
He would have been greatly courageous | 0:18:27 | 0:18:30 | |
because 15 years of his life was taken away | 0:18:30 | 0:18:34 | |
because of the restrictions in this country. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:38 | |
All I need is a chance, give them the chance and then we will work out who is good, bad and indifferent. | 0:18:38 | 0:18:44 | |
I'm not saying we are the best or we should play for South Africa, | 0:18:44 | 0:18:48 | |
instead of the whites, but put us together in the same arena and we will find out. | 0:18:48 | 0:18:53 | |
In my book there is only one winner. | 0:18:55 | 0:18:57 | |
I would put him on par with Graham Pollock, | 0:18:58 | 0:19:02 | |
Barry Richards and himself as the three greatest batsmen we ever produced. | 0:19:02 | 0:19:06 | |
While he was scoring centuries, militant opposition to the racist regime was fermenting. | 0:19:06 | 0:19:14 | |
Now, D'Oliveira's ambition was to make cricket itself part of the political struggle. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:19 | |
After he had a taste of international cricket, having played against the Kenyans, | 0:19:21 | 0:19:25 | |
there were then plans to bring a West Indian side out. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:29 | |
The audacious idea was to bring the best side in the world to South Africa to play the non-whites. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:35 | |
We wanted to put our cricket on the map and then the world would know | 0:19:35 | 0:19:39 | |
that there were other cricketers other than the white cricketers. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:43 | |
That tour was cancelled and Basil wasn't happy because he wanted | 0:19:43 | 0:19:46 | |
to test himself against the best and that was the catalyst for him | 0:19:46 | 0:19:49 | |
-going to England because he realised there was no possibility for him to play international cricket. -In 1960, | 0:19:49 | 0:19:55 | |
D'Oliveira's life changed. | 0:19:55 | 0:19:56 | |
He married his childhood sweetheart Naomi, | 0:19:56 | 0:19:59 | |
but already in his late twenties, he was frustrated by apartheid | 0:19:59 | 0:20:03 | |
from realising his sporting potential and was forced to try and make a name for himself abroad. | 0:20:03 | 0:20:09 | |
"Dear Mr Arlott, being so keen to play cricket in the Lancashire League | 0:20:09 | 0:20:15 | |
"I cannot refrain from availing myself of your generosity." | 0:20:15 | 0:20:20 | |
It was the great cricket commentator John Arlott who changed his life. | 0:20:22 | 0:20:27 | |
There was a commentary on cricket on the radio and I would listen to it and this beautiful voice | 0:20:27 | 0:20:32 | |
came across, a full-bodied voice and you could see it coming at you. | 0:20:32 | 0:20:39 | |
You can't make 200 in an hour and take nine for two and not be either | 0:20:39 | 0:20:43 | |
a good batsman or a good bowler. | 0:20:43 | 0:20:45 | |
Arlott had women that didn't even know about cricket, | 0:20:45 | 0:20:50 | |
they used to leave their pots and food to just listen to his voice. | 0:20:50 | 0:20:56 | |
A convinced opponent of apartheid, Arlott was determined to help him. | 0:20:56 | 0:21:02 | |
The consequences were to detonate the biggest controversy in cricket history. | 0:21:02 | 0:21:08 | |
And the correspondence leading up to Dolly's immigration to England | 0:21:10 | 0:21:15 | |
is now among the most treasured letters | 0:21:15 | 0:21:18 | |
that survive in cricket written in that green ink. I saw them under the hammer at auction a few years ago. | 0:21:18 | 0:21:24 | |
In his own country he couldn't play first-class cricket. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:28 | |
He can prove himself as a top-class player, but just a few people like Alan Oakman, Peter Sainsbury | 0:21:28 | 0:21:36 | |
and Jim Gray looked at him and said he was good. | 0:21:36 | 0:21:38 | |
One of the white cricketers who played against D'Oliveira in Africa | 0:21:38 | 0:21:42 | |
was opening bowler Jack Bannister, now a cricket writer. | 0:21:42 | 0:21:46 | |
We had heard about this chap D'Oliveira but when he hit that second ball of mine for six | 0:21:46 | 0:21:51 | |
over extra cover, I thought well, here we go, let's see what happens, and he was dazzling. | 0:21:51 | 0:21:56 | |
Peter Walker just kept looking at me, raising his hands and saying what a genius. | 0:21:56 | 0:22:02 | |
The figures were good. | 0:22:02 | 0:22:04 | |
He had never had a chance in his own country, which was the desperate thing. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:08 | |
And because in his letters he seemed such a terribly nice chap. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:13 | |
They had to take it that he could play. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:16 | |
It took two years. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:18 | |
I think I owe everything I have to John Arlott, I think he started it all. He wrote to me one day. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:24 | |
I was in Cape Town in February 1960 and there was a letter from him | 0:22:24 | 0:22:29 | |
stating would I like to play in leagues as a professional. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:33 | |
I have an offer for you to play as a professional in England this summer. | 0:22:33 | 0:22:37 | |
At last, in 1960, Middleton, a Lancashire League club, had an unexpected vacancy | 0:22:37 | 0:22:44 | |
for a professional at the princely sum of £450 for the season. | 0:22:44 | 0:22:49 | |
This seems to me an opportunity you should seize - | 0:22:49 | 0:22:53 | |
will you please cable me your decision at the earliest possible moment. | 0:22:53 | 0:22:57 | |
The Middleton club have a meeting on Monday next. | 0:22:57 | 0:23:00 | |
What was your reaction, Naomi, when you picked up that letter? | 0:23:00 | 0:23:04 | |
I took it to Basil and I said, "It's all right, you can go - if it is a professional post in England, | 0:23:04 | 0:23:10 | |
"it's all right." | 0:23:10 | 0:23:12 | |
No money in the bank, no money in the pocket. Basil was married now. | 0:23:12 | 0:23:15 | |
You went to this bar at the Grand Hotel | 0:23:15 | 0:23:19 | |
in Cape Town and on that day in January 1960 this man gave you new hope. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:25 | |
I would have taken him to England by rowing boat rather than see him miss this great opportunity. | 0:23:25 | 0:23:30 | |
The voice of the man who made it possible for you to come to England. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:32 | |
He has made the same 8,000-mile journey from Cape Town, yes, he is here today. Your friend Benny Bansda! | 0:23:32 | 0:23:39 | |
Dear Mr Arlott, many many thanks for your letter received. | 0:23:47 | 0:23:52 | |
He was looking downhearted, was he? | 0:23:52 | 0:23:55 | |
Very. Basil was standing there with his hands holding his chin, | 0:23:55 | 0:24:02 | |
telling me he didn't have £5 next to his name and wanted to call the deal off. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:07 | |
-So what did you do? -I told Basil, you take a walk, go home, write a letter to the people concerned | 0:24:07 | 0:24:15 | |
and leave the rest to me, and I will raise the money. | 0:24:15 | 0:24:18 | |
In the end between the three of us, Bannister, Adam and myself, | 0:24:18 | 0:24:22 | |
we decided to create a fundraising committee | 0:24:22 | 0:24:26 | |
to raise funds to at least keep him there for six months. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:30 | |
A lot of white and non-white cricketers helped me in the task and within a short period of time | 0:24:30 | 0:24:36 | |
we managed to raise £600 for Basil to go overseas. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:43 | |
Muslims, non-Muslims, white, black, yellow, all of them did their bit to see that Basil got overseas. | 0:24:43 | 0:24:51 | |
Why did you want him to go so much? | 0:24:51 | 0:24:53 | |
To open doors for the others. | 0:24:53 | 0:24:56 | |
The rest was now up to him. | 0:24:56 | 0:24:58 | |
But just as Basil's sporting career was taking off, | 0:24:59 | 0:25:03 | |
the political opposition in South Africa was deepening. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:06 | |
The police shot dead 69 people at Sharpville just days before D'Oliveira was to leave for England. | 0:25:06 | 0:25:14 | |
It was a turning-point and led directly to the ANC declaration of the armed struggle. | 0:25:14 | 0:25:20 | |
There are many people who feel that it is useless and futile for us | 0:25:20 | 0:25:26 | |
to continue talking about peace and non-violence against the government | 0:25:26 | 0:25:32 | |
whose reply is only savage attacks | 0:25:32 | 0:25:34 | |
on an unarmed and defenceless people. | 0:25:34 | 0:25:37 | |
The Arlott letters made clear that there was a political agenda right from the start. | 0:25:37 | 0:25:42 | |
I think asking him over here might change the sporting and political face of South Africa | 0:25:42 | 0:25:48 | |
which seems to me very worthwhile. | 0:25:48 | 0:25:51 | |
At the airport when I garlanded you, I said one thing - "Basil - go and represent us." | 0:25:54 | 0:25:59 | |
If you do well, we will do well. | 0:25:59 | 0:26:04 | |
You have today become a legend in South African sport and we are proud of you, Basil. | 0:26:04 | 0:26:10 | |
Thank you Benny Bansda. | 0:26:10 | 0:26:12 | |
The job was for him to try and establish a name for himself | 0:26:14 | 0:26:17 | |
in cricket and if he could do it then obviously someone else can do it. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:23 | |
I said, | 0:26:23 | 0:26:25 | |
"I've got to have a go." | 0:26:25 | 0:26:28 | |
28-year-old Basil D'Oliveira left South Africa in late March 1960. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:32 | |
On his shoulders he carried the hopes of the non-white community | 0:26:32 | 0:26:36 | |
that he could challenge apartheid by playing cricket, but he was amazed by what he found in England. | 0:26:36 | 0:26:42 | |
I have never seen a man so bewildered as Basil was that day. | 0:26:42 | 0:26:46 | |
"Mr D'Oliveira", a white man calling me Mr D'Oliveira, what the hell was going on?! | 0:26:46 | 0:26:51 | |
I took him along to see John Arlott and when we caught a train to Manchester I realised | 0:26:51 | 0:26:56 | |
how utterly confusing it was for him to be one day away from the racial segregation laws of South Africa. | 0:26:56 | 0:27:02 | |
I was frightened out of my bloody wits. | 0:27:02 | 0:27:05 | |
Once we were on the train he said, "Where do I sit?" | 0:27:05 | 0:27:08 | |
"Where do I eat?" | 0:27:08 | 0:27:09 | |
The whole train was full of whites - whites everywhere, | 0:27:09 | 0:27:14 | |
I said, "Christ Almighty, what's going on here?" | 0:27:14 | 0:27:17 | |
And John asked me if I was alright. I said "fine". | 0:27:17 | 0:27:21 | |
And we started getting correspondence from Basil. | 0:27:21 | 0:27:24 | |
I said, "I don't know how to play on these pitches, they are wet, damp, | 0:27:24 | 0:27:29 | |
"they have grass here. I don't know how to play on it." | 0:27:29 | 0:27:34 | |
You must have been very depressed. | 0:27:37 | 0:27:38 | |
-Of course I was. -The first thing he's missing, he wants to come home. | 0:27:38 | 0:27:42 | |
It is bitterly cold, you can't hold the bat and you can't throw a ball, | 0:27:42 | 0:27:46 | |
it is like your finger is going to snap, there was a lot of negatives coming from Basil all the time. | 0:27:46 | 0:27:52 | |
And yet we were worried and said, "Please, God let him make it, | 0:27:52 | 0:27:57 | |
"he will be the forerunner to what is going to happen in the future." | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
Come on, nobody is going to help you, you've got to do it yourself, get up. | 0:28:01 | 0:28:07 | |
Alone in a Lancashire mill town, playing as a professional on turf | 0:28:07 | 0:28:11 | |
rather than matting wickets, it was some weeks before he made good. | 0:28:11 | 0:28:16 | |
I got 70-odd, and from then on I never looked back, | 0:28:16 | 0:28:19 | |
it just happened from there. | 0:28:19 | 0:28:22 | |
Just a simple little word from Eric Price to say let it come. | 0:28:22 | 0:28:26 | |
"Anyway, Mr Arlott, I am sailing for home today after a successful debut in the leagues." | 0:28:35 | 0:28:43 | |
Returning to Cape Town after a first brilliant season in Lancashire, he was given a hero's welcome. | 0:28:43 | 0:28:50 | |
Already D'Oliveira's cricket abroad was a thorn in the side of the apartheid regime. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:55 | |
"The streets were lined with cheering crowds. Naturally the Boer - I hope you can pronounce | 0:28:55 | 0:29:04 | |
"the Afrikaans word, Mr Arlott - were aghast that a darkie could get such an ovation, | 0:29:04 | 0:29:09 | |
"and the opening created now for our coloured cricketers is all due to your efforts, | 0:29:09 | 0:29:15 | |
"for which I and all South African non-white cricketers will always be grateful. | 0:29:15 | 0:29:20 | |
"Could you please let me know when I will be allowed to play county cricket? I am interested." | 0:29:20 | 0:29:27 | |
John Arlott regarded what he was able to do for Basil D'Oliveira | 0:29:27 | 0:29:31 | |
as simply the greatest achievement of his life. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:35 | |
D'Oliveira became a British citizen in 1964. | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
And from then on, he established himself | 0:29:50 | 0:29:53 | |
for the Worcestershire side and then finally with England in 1966 and it was great to see how well he did. | 0:29:53 | 0:29:59 | |
He had been in England six years when he was selected to represent his adopted country. | 0:29:59 | 0:30:05 | |
I tell you, you could cry, it was an achievement. | 0:30:05 | 0:30:11 | |
Not being selected in your own country | 0:30:11 | 0:30:14 | |
and going to play for another country at his age and still make the English team, | 0:30:14 | 0:30:19 | |
it was the greatest thing. It was a great moment in our lives. It gave us motivation. | 0:30:19 | 0:30:25 | |
Even thinking about it now that I have been selected and played | 0:30:25 | 0:30:30 | |
-for England, it just seems like a dream to me. -If Basil were to divulge at that time his real age, | 0:30:30 | 0:30:36 | |
he would not have played. You work out when he did play for England. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:40 | |
Though D'Oliveira told the selectors that he was 31, | 0:30:40 | 0:30:45 | |
he was in fact 34, an age when most sportsmen have already retired. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:50 | |
His England debut was made against the mighty West Indians. It was at Lord's, the home of cricket. | 0:30:55 | 0:31:01 | |
And I'm on the balcony. I had my England sweater on and I stood there and looked out and thought, | 0:31:01 | 0:31:09 | |
"Jesus, | 0:31:09 | 0:31:11 | |
"amazing, I have done it. I have done it." | 0:31:11 | 0:31:14 | |
I had a little twinkle in my eye and I felt very sad and just stood there as I thought of my own people... | 0:31:20 | 0:31:28 | |
people on top of that hill, my friends, my family, | 0:31:28 | 0:31:31 | |
and the national government - that they gotta go. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:37 | |
You cannot get rid of me now. I am IN! | 0:31:37 | 0:31:42 | |
It was like putting the pie in the face of those that ruled. | 0:31:42 | 0:31:46 | |
They rejected the man, | 0:31:48 | 0:31:50 | |
they rejected all non-white sportsmen and here he came back and he proved to them - | 0:31:50 | 0:31:58 | |
I can represent a country, and I am representing England. | 0:31:58 | 0:32:04 | |
That is not bad, that mean something. | 0:32:05 | 0:32:08 | |
Unluckily run out for 27 in his first innings, he was nevertheless an immediate success. | 0:32:08 | 0:32:14 | |
In his second match he had four massive sixes off the formidable West Indian fast bowling attack. | 0:32:14 | 0:32:21 | |
He was a very attacking player. | 0:32:21 | 0:32:23 | |
I think he is the only player in the world | 0:32:23 | 0:32:25 | |
that has hit me for six. | 0:32:25 | 0:32:27 | |
How did you feel? | 0:32:29 | 0:32:32 | |
I was thinking, "Are you crazy?!" | 0:32:32 | 0:32:35 | |
He said if you bowl me another one I'll hit you again! | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
But in the words of CLR James, Basil D'Oliveira | 0:32:38 | 0:32:42 | |
destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the West Indian fast bowlers. | 0:32:42 | 0:32:48 | |
I don't know what happened but I know went over long-on, | 0:32:48 | 0:32:52 | |
and that was a big round and that is not funny! | 0:32:52 | 0:32:56 | |
Up to now he hasn't apologised. | 0:32:56 | 0:32:59 | |
No...! My most sincere apologies! | 0:32:59 | 0:33:03 | |
We were imagining all this, because I never saw a single innings of his since he went to England. | 0:33:06 | 0:33:11 | |
-How did you feel when he got his 88? -I thought, "He is not only my schoolfriend..." | 0:33:11 | 0:33:18 | |
-His success was our success! -It meant we are capable of going to the top. | 0:33:18 | 0:33:26 | |
That winter he was included in the MCC tour of the West Indies. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:31 | |
England needing one run for victory. | 0:33:31 | 0:33:33 | |
Gibbs comes in, bowls to D'Oliveira and he's played around the corner. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:39 | |
England have won a memorable victory! | 0:33:39 | 0:33:44 | |
A wonderful victory by seven wickets and probably two balls to go. | 0:33:44 | 0:33:49 | |
Just wondering, Basil, | 0:33:49 | 0:33:51 | |
what is going to happen in the possible event of your being selected for the MCC tour | 0:33:51 | 0:33:59 | |
of South Africa? This is something you must have thought about, | 0:33:59 | 0:34:02 | |
although obviously you wouldn't plan for because you can only take life as it comes. | 0:34:02 | 0:34:06 | |
I think at this stage I would prefer to take life as it comes. | 0:34:06 | 0:34:11 | |
If it comes about that I am still playing at that time, | 0:34:11 | 0:34:15 | |
and invited to join the side, I think I will then make a decision. | 0:34:15 | 0:34:20 | |
What it will be I don't know. | 0:34:20 | 0:34:22 | |
For D'Oliveira to play Test cricket | 0:34:22 | 0:34:25 | |
in the country of his birth would be the culmination of his boyhood dream. | 0:34:25 | 0:34:31 | |
For the MCC committee at Lord's, however, that question | 0:34:31 | 0:34:35 | |
of whether it was possible to select D'Oliveira, | 0:34:35 | 0:34:38 | |
an Englishman seen in South Africa as a Coloured, | 0:34:38 | 0:34:41 | |
for the forthcoming 1968 tour of South Africa was a time bomb waiting to explode. | 0:34:42 | 0:34:47 | |
It's important to remember that the D'Oliveira affair unfolds against | 0:34:47 | 0:34:51 | |
a background of unprecedented global political protest. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:57 | |
The culture of protest had spread in 1968 to every country in the world | 0:34:57 | 0:35:03 | |
and we have to remember earlier in 1968, | 0:35:03 | 0:35:05 | |
in the US, you see the assassination of Martin Luther King and huge, violent insurrections | 0:35:05 | 0:35:12 | |
in nearly all the black ghettos in the US, violently suppressed by the army. | 0:35:12 | 0:35:17 | |
You had the events in May of Paris '68. The government was nearly overthrown. | 0:35:17 | 0:35:22 | |
In August, you had the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. | 0:35:26 | 0:35:30 | |
Whether it was in Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, | 0:35:30 | 0:35:35 | |
Australia, and of course South Africa itself, | 0:35:35 | 0:35:39 | |
this was a year of huge political ferment - it was a year | 0:35:39 | 0:35:43 | |
in which young people of all kinds were out in the streets protesting over a wide number of issues. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:49 | |
And the D'Oliveira affair is, in a sense, the ripple | 0:35:59 | 0:36:02 | |
of that global tide of protest felt in the backwater of cricket. | 0:36:02 | 0:36:06 | |
Sport was so dear to white South Africa and for black people that didn't have the vote it was actually | 0:36:08 | 0:36:14 | |
a very important tool to lobby the outside world not to play against white South Africa, | 0:36:14 | 0:36:21 | |
and that played a major role in the demise of apartheid. | 0:36:21 | 0:36:25 | |
We whites in this country have a right to maintain our white identity under all circumstances. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:32 | |
The South African Prime Minister in 1968 was John Forster. | 0:36:32 | 0:36:37 | |
We have not only said that we have a right to maintain our white identity. | 0:36:37 | 0:36:43 | |
Under pressure he would take as aggressive a posture as necessary to maintain the status quo. | 0:36:43 | 0:36:50 | |
What you have to understand about Forster is that the one thing he couldn't accept | 0:36:52 | 0:36:57 | |
was the idea of Basil D'Oliveira coming over as a South African-born coloured as part of an England team. | 0:36:57 | 0:37:02 | |
This would not be accepted by his party. | 0:37:04 | 0:37:07 | |
He tried to ensure that D'Oliveira wasn't selected for the England team to tour South Africa, | 0:37:07 | 0:37:14 | |
but without stating publicly that D'Oliveira was not allowed. | 0:37:14 | 0:37:19 | |
We also say to the world, and it is necessary | 0:37:19 | 0:37:23 | |
at this stage to say it, that as far as South Africa is concerned, | 0:37:23 | 0:37:28 | |
we won't be governed from anywhere outside South Africa. | 0:37:28 | 0:37:33 | |
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE | 0:37:33 | 0:37:35 | |
The racism in South African cricket, far from being challenged, | 0:37:35 | 0:37:39 | |
had actually been accepted in white cricketing countries for a century. | 0:37:39 | 0:37:43 | |
South Africa played international cricket on its own terms. | 0:37:43 | 0:37:47 | |
South Africa said it would only played white countries | 0:37:47 | 0:37:50 | |
and it played countries it had historically played with - New Zealand, England and Australia. | 0:37:50 | 0:37:55 | |
At no time during all those decades did anyone from the MCC or the ICC | 0:37:55 | 0:38:02 | |
breathe the slightest objection | 0:38:02 | 0:38:04 | |
to South Africa's policy of refusing to play anyone but white nations. | 0:38:04 | 0:38:11 | |
The question is - would the English establishment which ran English cricket through the MCC from Lord's | 0:38:11 | 0:38:16 | |
now begin to plot with the South African authorities in an attempt | 0:38:16 | 0:38:20 | |
to save them from the embarrassment of D'Oliveira's presence in a touring team? | 0:38:20 | 0:38:25 | |
The MCC's role was not very glorious, it saw South Africa as its old friends | 0:38:33 | 0:38:39 | |
and saw no reason to exclude them. | 0:38:39 | 0:38:43 | |
We think that playing cricket can do nothing but good. | 0:38:43 | 0:38:49 | |
As far as the MCC was concerned South Africa was part of their cosy club world. | 0:38:49 | 0:38:54 | |
It is wrong to isolate South Africa, whose cricketers we all know | 0:38:54 | 0:39:01 | |
and respect, and they are very fine cricketers indeed, because of their government's policy. | 0:39:01 | 0:39:09 | |
It is not the Cricket Association policy - it is the government policy and they can do nothing about it. | 0:39:09 | 0:39:14 | |
With D'Oliveira, South Africa was presented with the problem of playing against a non-white cricketer | 0:39:14 | 0:39:20 | |
playing for one of his traditional countries. It objected to that and that in a way, | 0:39:20 | 0:39:25 | |
brought home to England what the problem of playing cricket with South Africa was. | 0:39:25 | 0:39:31 | |
Which it hadn't crystallised to that extent. It lead to the demonstrations and the protests and so on. | 0:39:31 | 0:39:36 | |
This was the late '60s, a time of a wakening. | 0:39:36 | 0:39:40 | |
The outgoing president of the MCC was Sir Alex Douglas-Home, former prime minister. | 0:39:42 | 0:39:49 | |
Home spoke to D'Oliveira about the prospect of his being selected for the South African tour. | 0:39:49 | 0:39:55 | |
I saw him via Colin Cowdrey. | 0:39:55 | 0:39:59 | |
Colin said, "I think you ought to go and see him - this is a huge political issue. | 0:39:59 | 0:40:05 | |
"It's not cricket any longer." | 0:40:05 | 0:40:08 | |
He said, "Basil, don't ever come off that cricket field." | 0:40:08 | 0:40:13 | |
-He was saying, don't get involved in politics. -Yes because... | 0:40:13 | 0:40:17 | |
You haven't got enough time. To play the game is hard enough. | 0:40:17 | 0:40:21 | |
So D'Oliveira, although the focus of attention, resolved to say nothing to the press in 1968 | 0:40:21 | 0:40:26 | |
about his possible inclusion in the side to tour South Africa. | 0:40:26 | 0:40:31 | |
All I've got is that cricket bat, I've got nothing else. | 0:40:31 | 0:40:36 | |
I have nothing else, I have no position, no money, I'm with no-one, | 0:40:36 | 0:40:41 | |
I've only got that cricket bat. | 0:40:41 | 0:40:44 | |
Australia was in England during the summer of 1968. | 0:40:44 | 0:40:48 | |
When the side to tour South Africa was announced in the autumn, | 0:40:48 | 0:40:52 | |
D'Oliveira was determined he would be in it. | 0:40:52 | 0:40:56 | |
So I got 80 against the Aussies... | 0:40:56 | 0:40:59 | |
COMMENTATOR: 'D'Oliveira, calm judgment and controlled aggression. | 0:40:59 | 0:41:04 | |
'It seemed Pocock might stay with him while he got 100. | 0:41:04 | 0:41:08 | |
'But Gleeson killed that thought.' | 0:41:08 | 0:41:11 | |
I got to 87, and I played bloody well! | 0:41:11 | 0:41:14 | |
Though he was one of the few Englishmen to score runs, | 0:41:14 | 0:41:18 | |
D'Oliveira was inexplicably, it seemed, dropped by the selectors. | 0:41:18 | 0:41:23 | |
Do you remember why you decided to drop him? | 0:41:23 | 0:41:26 | |
Specifically, no. | 0:41:26 | 0:41:29 | |
Specifically, no. | 0:41:29 | 0:41:32 | |
-But there was this kind of background of... -No. | 0:41:32 | 0:41:35 | |
I would refute that absolutely and totally. | 0:41:35 | 0:41:39 | |
If there has been any implication that people like Alec Bedser, | 0:41:39 | 0:41:44 | |
Don Kenyon, Les Ames... You know, apart from the toffee-nosed lot... | 0:41:44 | 0:41:49 | |
..had any motive other than picking a cricket team for England, | 0:41:49 | 0:41:54 | |
then, as far as I'm concerned, forget it. | 0:41:54 | 0:41:58 | |
It was a lousy three months for me, and for the other selectors. | 0:41:58 | 0:42:03 | |
All sorts of motives were implied. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:08 | |
And they were absolutely, totally wide of the mark. | 0:42:08 | 0:42:12 | |
D'Oliveira, no longer in the England team, returned to Worcester, | 0:42:12 | 0:42:17 | |
his county, and, as a bowler, topped the county averages. | 0:42:17 | 0:42:22 | |
But behind the scenes, the South African government | 0:42:22 | 0:42:26 | |
was plotting against him, as can now be revealed. | 0:42:26 | 0:42:31 | |
There was collaboration between the South African Cricket Association | 0:42:31 | 0:42:36 | |
and Vorster, to try and prevent D'Oliveira's selection. | 0:42:36 | 0:42:40 | |
D'Oliveira had at this point been dropped from the England team, | 0:42:40 | 0:42:45 | |
and the South Africans wanted to keep it that way. | 0:42:45 | 0:42:50 | |
In July, the attempt to bribe D'Oliveira was made, | 0:42:50 | 0:42:54 | |
to make himself unavailable. | 0:42:54 | 0:42:57 | |
D'Oliveira now received a call from a South African. | 0:42:57 | 0:43:02 | |
-Somebody offered you money not to go, didn't they? -Yes. | 0:43:03 | 0:43:07 | |
-Tiny Westhuizen. -That was cooked up in Vorster's office. | 0:43:07 | 0:43:11 | |
He said, "You haven't played all that well this season. | 0:43:11 | 0:43:15 | |
"I see you're keen to coach. | 0:43:15 | 0:43:19 | |
"Maybe we could help." | 0:43:19 | 0:43:22 | |
The offer would be for D'Oliveira to come and coach in South Africa... | 0:43:22 | 0:43:26 | |
I said, "What do you mean, 'Maybe you can help?'" | 0:43:26 | 0:43:31 | |
He says, "We can produce the money to pay for you, | 0:43:31 | 0:43:35 | |
"your wife, your kids, to live in South Africa. | 0:43:35 | 0:43:39 | |
"Flat, house, the whole caboodle is yours. | 0:43:39 | 0:43:43 | |
"It looks as if you're not going to play for England again. | 0:43:43 | 0:43:48 | |
"Here, you've got a golden opportunity." | 0:43:48 | 0:43:52 | |
I said, "I've got to think about it." | 0:43:52 | 0:43:55 | |
He said, "Well, we'll offer you 50,000 quid." | 0:43:55 | 0:43:58 | |
The condition was that I should make myself unavailable for England. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:03 | |
-What did you say? -I said, "I can't do that." | 0:44:03 | 0:44:07 | |
He said, "You've got nothing else! | 0:44:07 | 0:44:10 | |
They didn't realise what I was fighting, what I was after. | 0:44:10 | 0:44:14 | |
I had to get the thing back. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:16 | |
I want to be picked, I want to play for England, to go to South Africa. | 0:44:16 | 0:44:21 | |
Time was running out, as the last Test match of the summer approached. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:27 | |
-JOHN ARLOTT: -'High summer came to the cricketers | 0:44:27 | 0:44:30 | |
'for the Fifth Test at the Oval.' | 0:44:30 | 0:44:33 | |
At the 11th hour, Basil was picked. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:36 | |
It gave him the chance he needed. | 0:44:36 | 0:44:39 | |
The story is that I was picked for a Test with Australia at the Oval. | 0:44:40 | 0:44:45 | |
'Lawry lost the toss, and England batted on an amiable pitch.' | 0:44:45 | 0:44:49 | |
And I pulled out 24 hours, 48 hours before. | 0:44:51 | 0:44:55 | |
The next thing I heard, Bas had been picked in my place. | 0:44:55 | 0:44:59 | |
I thought, "I'm an opening batsman, he's a number five, | 0:44:59 | 0:45:03 | |
"and a seam bowler - interesting selection!" | 0:45:03 | 0:45:07 | |
He was a surprise choice, some say a provocative choice - | 0:45:07 | 0:45:11 | |
maybe we'll never know. | 0:45:11 | 0:45:13 | |
But if he'd not been chosen, there wouldn't have been howls of protest. | 0:45:13 | 0:45:18 | |
'Milburn announced himself thunderously...' | 0:45:18 | 0:45:23 | |
Immediately after this match, | 0:45:23 | 0:45:26 | |
the selectors would pick the team to tour South Africa. | 0:45:26 | 0:45:30 | |
John Edrich had scored 164. That was the platform | 0:45:30 | 0:45:34 | |
for the big England total that was necessary. | 0:45:34 | 0:45:38 | |
They could have fallen away, then, but Dolly came in about number six. | 0:45:38 | 0:45:43 | |
'As Thursday had been Edrich's day, so Friday was D'Oliveira's. | 0:45:43 | 0:45:49 | |
'He lifted England's scoring rate healthily and steadily | 0:45:49 | 0:45:53 | |
'with his own particular range of strokes.' | 0:45:53 | 0:45:57 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:45:57 | 0:45:59 | |
Basil D'Oliveira's innings, it was a typical Dolly performance. | 0:45:59 | 0:46:05 | |
-RICHIE BENAUD: -'There it is. Must be. It's a 100 to D'Oliveira!' | 0:46:11 | 0:46:15 | |
He'd play to go to South Africa with his life, Basil, no doubt about that. | 0:46:15 | 0:46:20 | |
He's want to go back and show them, that's what he'd be playing for. | 0:46:20 | 0:46:25 | |
That's probably why he did so well in that match. | 0:46:25 | 0:46:30 | |
"This is my last chance to make it onto that tour." | 0:46:30 | 0:46:33 | |
'A good stroke, and it's four runs...' | 0:46:33 | 0:46:37 | |
We said to ourselves, "That's put the cat amongst the pigeons." | 0:46:37 | 0:46:41 | |
'And that's a fine shot.' | 0:46:41 | 0:46:45 | |
I felt that no-one could stop me on that day. | 0:46:45 | 0:46:48 | |
I'm not a big-head, but nothing was going to stop me. | 0:46:48 | 0:46:52 | |
'Wickets fell at the other end, but D'Oliveira got enough of the bowling | 0:46:52 | 0:46:57 | |
'to play an innings of 158 before a full Oval ground.' | 0:46:57 | 0:47:01 | |
The crowd at the Oval, they sensed it, they felt it. | 0:47:01 | 0:47:05 | |
'What a good shot!' | 0:47:08 | 0:47:10 | |
It was his chance to prove that he was one of the great all-rounders. | 0:47:10 | 0:47:16 | |
Basil was a good player, he really was. | 0:47:19 | 0:47:22 | |
He had a very short backlift, very powerful forearms. | 0:47:22 | 0:47:27 | |
'That's a lovely shot, beautiful stroke.' | 0:47:27 | 0:47:30 | |
If you over-pitched it, as a spinner, | 0:47:30 | 0:47:33 | |
he'd just knock it back over your head, boom, like that - six. | 0:47:33 | 0:47:37 | |
Short-arm jab. | 0:47:37 | 0:47:40 | |
'That's a fine square drive on the off side. It's going to be cut off. | 0:47:40 | 0:47:45 | |
'Two runs for D'Oliveira.' | 0:47:45 | 0:47:47 | |
He bowled the little dobblers to get a key wicket, | 0:47:47 | 0:47:52 | |
or... OUTBREAK OF APPLAUSE | 0:47:52 | 0:47:55 | |
he would play a key innings for you. | 0:47:55 | 0:47:58 | |
If ever there was a key innings, this was the one. | 0:47:58 | 0:48:02 | |
He was a natural cricketer. | 0:48:02 | 0:48:04 | |
You'll never see anyone quite like Dolly | 0:48:04 | 0:48:09 | |
in the manner of his stroke-play. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:12 | |
And England took some sort of hold on the game. | 0:48:12 | 0:48:16 | |
'..really superb innings from Basil D'Oliveira. | 0:48:16 | 0:48:20 | |
'I can't recall ever seeing him play better than this. | 0:48:20 | 0:48:25 | |
'Great value for this big crowd at the Oval today.' | 0:48:25 | 0:48:29 | |
-Has it bought him a ticket to South Africa?. -Without doubt. | 0:48:31 | 0:48:36 | |
We were overjoyed, and we were all waiting | 0:48:40 | 0:48:44 | |
with our fingers like this, hoping they'd let him in to the country. | 0:48:44 | 0:48:50 | |
We could see one of our guys playing for England against South Africa. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:54 | |
-RICHIE BENAUD: -'And the captain avidly watching the play...' | 0:48:54 | 0:48:59 | |
I think it would have been a huge test for many, many people. | 0:48:59 | 0:49:04 | |
If I'm picked, the South African government will get the humiliation | 0:49:04 | 0:49:09 | |
of having to back me... | 0:49:09 | 0:49:12 | |
And that was the problem the MCC were trying to avoid. | 0:49:12 | 0:49:17 | |
'It's been a beautiful innings from Basil D'Oliveira. | 0:49:17 | 0:49:21 | |
'He's played some glorious strokes, all round the wicket.' | 0:49:21 | 0:49:26 | |
When he scored 150, we thought, "Now, they can't leave him out." | 0:49:26 | 0:49:31 | |
Everybody wanted him to come. A lot of whites also wanted him to come. | 0:49:31 | 0:49:37 | |
'..bowl to D'Oliveira... And it's his 150! | 0:49:37 | 0:49:41 | |
-APPLAUSE -'150 to D'Oliveira - | 0:49:41 | 0:49:44 | |
'his highest ever Test score - a wonderful innings, there's no doubt. | 0:49:44 | 0:49:49 | |
'Chosen at the last moment. Prideaux couldn't play, | 0:49:49 | 0:49:54 | |
'in came D'Oliveira and he's played this magnificent innings.' | 0:49:54 | 0:49:59 | |
It was a political thing. Now the government must open their ears | 0:49:59 | 0:50:04 | |
and their eyes and they must look at their laws now. | 0:50:04 | 0:50:07 | |
Here is a coloured man that could not play for South Africa | 0:50:07 | 0:50:11 | |
who has gone to England, qualified by residence, came back here | 0:50:11 | 0:50:15 | |
to play for England against the guys. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:18 | |
We are now going to support England, and pray that Basil will perform. | 0:50:18 | 0:50:22 | |
Everybody was waiting for that moment to happen. | 0:50:22 | 0:50:27 | |
-RICHIE BENAUD: -He's played so well today, | 0:50:27 | 0:50:30 | |
and written himself a ticket for South Africa in so doing. | 0:50:30 | 0:50:34 | |
One cannot overestimate how significant this innings was | 0:50:34 | 0:50:39 | |
in the bigger world outside cricket. | 0:50:39 | 0:50:43 | |
'Lawry, the left-hander... | 0:50:45 | 0:50:49 | |
'A good single, Illingworth having to hurry...' | 0:50:51 | 0:50:55 | |
Dolly must have thought that 158 had got him onto the aircraft | 0:50:55 | 0:51:00 | |
to tour the land of his upbringing, which would have been | 0:51:00 | 0:51:04 | |
extremely emotional for him and for other people. | 0:51:04 | 0:51:08 | |
-Catch it! -'It's well caught. | 0:51:12 | 0:51:15 | |
'A gentle sweep played by D'Oliveira and the ninth England wicket down. | 0:51:15 | 0:51:20 | |
'D'Oliveira out, caught Inverarity, bowled Mallett, for 158.' | 0:51:20 | 0:51:25 | |
-JIM LAKER: -'The end of a superb innings from Basil D'Oliveira. | 0:51:25 | 0:51:30 | |
'And this huge crowd at the Oval all now standing up, | 0:51:30 | 0:51:34 | |
'applauding him all the way back.' | 0:51:34 | 0:51:38 | |
-As you walked back to the pavilion at the Oval... -Yes! | 0:51:38 | 0:51:42 | |
-That's what you were thinking? -Yes! I'm in again. I'm here. | 0:51:42 | 0:51:47 | |
I walked off, the whole ground stood up, the whole ground stood up. | 0:51:47 | 0:51:52 | |
-JIM LAKER: -'There can be no prouder man than Basil D'Oliveira...' | 0:51:52 | 0:51:56 | |
I've done it now. | 0:51:56 | 0:51:59 | |
I've done it now. It's all come right. | 0:51:59 | 0:52:04 | |
It's all come right. I was in the shower and the door opened. | 0:52:06 | 0:52:10 | |
Colin came in and said, "Well played, really well played. | 0:52:10 | 0:52:15 | |
"You looked good. The side's going to be announced on Tuesday. | 0:52:15 | 0:52:21 | |
"You're going to be in it. I'm going to back you." | 0:52:23 | 0:52:28 | |
I said, "OK, fine." He says, "Can you imagine what's going to happen?" | 0:52:28 | 0:52:32 | |
I says, "No, I can't, and neither can you, because you don't know. | 0:52:32 | 0:52:37 | |
"But I'll tell you one thing, I'm not scared of the situation. | 0:52:37 | 0:52:42 | |
"I'll handle my corner, you handle yours, and we'll see it through." | 0:52:42 | 0:52:47 | |
APPLAUSE | 0:52:47 | 0:52:50 | |
The match itself would have an extraordinary finale. | 0:52:50 | 0:52:54 | |
I was here in 1968, and it's still, 35 years on, | 0:52:54 | 0:52:59 | |
in the top five of my most memorable matches, for its own sake, | 0:52:59 | 0:53:04 | |
quite apart from the political aftermath, | 0:53:04 | 0:53:08 | |
which probably took away from what was a sensational final day. | 0:53:08 | 0:53:12 | |
-JOHN ARLOTT: -'A couple of minutes before lunch, at 86-5, | 0:53:12 | 0:53:17 | |
'the players went off for the first drop of a thunder shower which, | 0:53:17 | 0:53:22 | |
'in less than an hour, reduced the Oval to a series of minor lakes.' | 0:53:22 | 0:53:27 | |
All hope was lost. The Australian journalists had filed their stories | 0:53:27 | 0:53:32 | |
that they'd won the series, since this was going to be a draw. | 0:53:32 | 0:53:37 | |
They were saying, "Send her down, Hughie," as it poured down. | 0:53:37 | 0:53:41 | |
Then the public went out and helped to make it just about playable. | 0:53:41 | 0:53:46 | |
'May we wonder whether they would have found quite so many volunteers | 0:53:46 | 0:53:51 | |
'if the positions of England and Australia had been reversed? | 0:53:51 | 0:53:55 | |
'Play could start at 4.45, with an hour and a quarter left. | 0:53:55 | 0:53:59 | |
'Australia had no chance of scoring 266. | 0:53:59 | 0:54:03 | |
'England wanted five more wickets. | 0:54:03 | 0:54:05 | |
'It only seemed possible if the drying wicket misbehaved. | 0:54:05 | 0:54:10 | |
'It never did - it was too wet. | 0:54:10 | 0:54:13 | |
'Cowdrey set an unheard-of field, and shuffled through his bowlers | 0:54:13 | 0:54:18 | |
'hopefully, but with no advantage for 40 minutes...' | 0:54:18 | 0:54:23 | |
This was to be a great day for English cricket, | 0:54:23 | 0:54:27 | |
and D'Oliveira was to play a decisive role. | 0:54:27 | 0:54:31 | |
'Then D'Oliveira, his fifth bowler since play re-started, | 0:54:31 | 0:54:35 | |
'floated one past Jarman, and clipped away the off bail...' | 0:54:35 | 0:54:40 | |
CHEERING 'He's out! | 0:54:40 | 0:54:43 | |
'There's the first wicket. D'Oliveira has got it...' | 0:54:43 | 0:54:47 | |
He didn't get a lot of wickets, but he got some key wickets. | 0:54:47 | 0:54:52 | |
And that was the flood gates opening up. | 0:54:52 | 0:54:56 | |
Cowdrey brought Underwood on at this end, | 0:54:56 | 0:54:59 | |
and he finished with seven for. | 0:54:59 | 0:55:02 | |
'He's out, caught...! | 0:55:02 | 0:55:04 | |
'Ooh, he's out, is he? Caught!' | 0:55:06 | 0:55:08 | |
It was a shaker. We were shaking with excitement. | 0:55:08 | 0:55:12 | |
-HENRY BLOFELD: -'He's got him! Off stump knocked out of the ground. | 0:55:12 | 0:55:16 | |
'Australia are 120-9, with just one wicket to go, | 0:55:16 | 0:55:20 | |
'and ten minutes and a half left.' | 0:55:20 | 0:55:23 | |
Getting Inverarity in the last over of the day. | 0:55:23 | 0:55:28 | |
-Owzat! -'They appeal, and he's out! | 0:55:29 | 0:55:33 | |
'England have won! And the series is drawn! | 0:55:33 | 0:55:37 | |
'There's Colin Cowdrey, the happiest man on the field...' | 0:55:39 | 0:55:45 | |
-JOHN ARLOTT: -'So, the 1968 series, a series all too full of rain | 0:55:48 | 0:55:52 | |
'and frustration, had ended in sunshine, | 0:55:52 | 0:55:55 | |
'and on a high-dramatic note.' | 0:55:55 | 0:55:59 | |
HENRY BLOFELD: Here we have the England captain. | 0:55:59 | 0:56:02 | |
What a marvellous finish it was, Colin... | 0:56:02 | 0:56:06 | |
I've done it. I've got to be picked. | 0:56:06 | 0:56:08 | |
How the hell can they not pick me as one of the 16? | 0:56:08 | 0:56:13 | |
I've done enough, and I will do some more. | 0:56:13 | 0:56:17 | |
When you pick the side, will you allow yourself to be influenced | 0:56:17 | 0:56:21 | |
-by anything other than cricket? -Er, no. | 0:56:21 | 0:56:24 | |
We've got to sit down in about 45 minutes' time in fact | 0:56:24 | 0:56:29 | |
and pick the best team in England which will beat South Africa. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:34 | |
And so, highly politically charged thing is left to the selectors. | 0:56:34 | 0:56:38 | |
-He was worried about the politics. -Yes, very much. | 0:56:38 | 0:56:42 | |
But he told me he'd back me. | 0:56:42 | 0:56:44 | |
He did tell me emphatically he was going to back me. | 0:56:44 | 0:56:48 | |
-Do you think he really did? -I think he would have done, yes. | 0:56:48 | 0:56:52 | |
FRANK BOUGH: 'With the selectors in session, D'Oliveira waits in silence | 0:56:52 | 0:56:56 | |
'to hear whether he will achieve his ambition | 0:56:56 | 0:57:00 | |
'of playing Test cricket in the country of his birth.' | 0:57:00 | 0:57:04 | |
And then came the bombshell. The MCC committee dropped him. | 0:57:04 | 0:57:10 | |
They didn't have to bring him back for the Oval Test. | 0:57:10 | 0:57:15 | |
He's scored 158, and they haven't picked him to tour South Africa! | 0:57:15 | 0:57:19 | |
We as coloured cricketers accused the English authorities | 0:57:19 | 0:57:24 | |
of bowing down to our government here. | 0:57:24 | 0:57:28 | |
-Why do you think you weren't selected? -I think I was set up. | 0:57:28 | 0:57:33 | |
They hadn't a lot to do. I'd given it all to them. | 0:57:33 | 0:57:38 | |
It was on a plate. I was set up. They had a golden opportunity. | 0:57:38 | 0:57:43 | |
From documents in Prime Minister Vorster's archive in South Africa, | 0:57:43 | 0:57:48 | |
which have now been opened, we can reconstruct what actually happened | 0:57:48 | 0:57:53 | |
during 1968 | 0:57:53 | 0:57:55 | |
The powers that be at the MCC had known for some time | 0:57:58 | 0:58:02 | |
that to choose D'Oliveira would mean the cancellation of the tour | 0:58:02 | 0:58:08 | |
and would open the Pandora's box about the general question | 0:58:08 | 0:58:13 | |
of English cricket's relationship with South Africa. | 0:58:13 | 0:58:16 | |
Had the selectors been told that if he was selected, | 0:58:16 | 0:58:20 | |
the tour would go up in smoke? That's the smoking gun thing. | 0:58:20 | 0:58:24 | |
Unknown to anybody at the time, the ruling elite at the MCC | 0:58:24 | 0:58:28 | |
had been in contact all year with the apartheid authorities | 0:58:28 | 0:58:33 | |
in what amounted to a conspiracy to allow the tour to go ahead. | 0:58:33 | 0:58:37 | |
Alec Douglas-Home and Colin Cowdrey were at the centre of it. | 0:58:37 | 0:58:42 | |
Douglas-Home told Cowdrey - this is in the summer of 1968 - | 0:58:42 | 0:58:47 | |
"We wanted relationships kept as warm as possible in the current climate." | 0:58:47 | 0:58:52 | |
He didn't want to put unnecessary pressure on the Vorster government. | 0:58:52 | 0:58:57 | |
The way to overcome the difficulties presented by apartheid | 0:58:57 | 0:59:01 | |
and the South African policies | 0:59:01 | 0:59:04 | |
is to have as many contacts as possible. | 0:59:04 | 0:59:08 | |
The MCC wrote to the SA Cricket Association at the start of 1968, | 0:59:08 | 0:59:13 | |
saying, "Are we free to select who we want to select on this tour?" | 0:59:13 | 0:59:19 | |
We sent a warning that we expected the South African government | 0:59:19 | 0:59:24 | |
to accept the tour in its entirety. | 0:59:24 | 0:59:27 | |
Sir Alec Douglas-Home had seen Vorster in Cape Town, | 0:59:27 | 0:59:31 | |
and Vorster had told him, | 0:59:31 | 0:59:35 | |
"If you ask me to guarantee I'll let D'Oliveira in, my answer must be no." | 0:59:35 | 0:59:40 | |
Douglas-Home goes back to the MCC committee personally, | 0:59:40 | 0:59:45 | |
and says, "Look, don't ask for guarantees now." | 0:59:45 | 0:59:49 | |
Douglas-Home had ulterior motives for wanting the MCC | 0:59:49 | 0:59:53 | |
to be compliant with the South Africans. | 0:59:53 | 0:59:57 | |
His was a wider, political agenda. | 0:59:57 | 1:00:00 | |
He was trying to get South Africa on board for dealing with Smith | 1:00:00 | 1:00:05 | |
and UDI, in Rhodesia. | 1:00:05 | 1:00:08 | |
He felt that if you pressed Vorster into a corner on the sports issue, | 1:00:08 | 1:00:13 | |
he'd be more embattled, and less willing to help the British | 1:00:13 | 1:00:17 | |
in dealing with the Rhodesian problem. | 1:00:17 | 1:00:20 | |
There is further incriminating evidence that the MCC knew full well | 1:00:20 | 1:00:25 | |
that D'Oliveira would never be acceptable to the South Africans. | 1:00:25 | 1:00:30 | |
Vorster sends a direct message to the MCC via Lord Cobham, to the effect, | 1:00:30 | 1:00:35 | |
"Don't even think about it." | 1:00:35 | 1:00:38 | |
Select D'Oliveira, and we won't let him in - the tour will be cancelled. | 1:00:38 | 1:00:42 | |
Cobham's message was fatal for D'Oliveira's chances. | 1:00:42 | 1:00:46 | |
The information is handed to the trio who control the MCC - | 1:00:46 | 1:00:50 | |
to Griffith, secretary of the MCC, | 1:00:50 | 1:00:53 | |
to Gilligan, who's president, | 1:00:53 | 1:00:56 | |
and to Gubby Allen, who's treasurer, | 1:00:56 | 1:00:59 | |
that D'Oliveira will never be acceptable to Vorster. | 1:00:59 | 1:01:03 | |
But were the selectors themselves told about Cobham's message? | 1:01:03 | 1:01:08 | |
-His view was never passed on to the selectors? -No. | 1:01:08 | 1:01:12 | |
You never heard about it until after... | 1:01:12 | 1:01:17 | |
That's right. Mmm. | 1:01:17 | 1:01:19 | |
-which minutes have gone missing? -The minutes of the selection committee. | 1:01:19 | 1:01:24 | |
-What's happened to them? -They're not available in the Lord's archive. | 1:01:24 | 1:01:29 | |
But we do know that the meeting went on for about five hours. | 1:01:29 | 1:01:34 | |
There was a chairman and three other selectors, and the captain. | 1:01:34 | 1:01:38 | |
In fact, there were at least ten people in that room at Lord's. | 1:01:38 | 1:01:44 | |
The MCC always provided observers, | 1:01:44 | 1:01:47 | |
to make sure that touring teams would be acceptable to their hosts. | 1:01:47 | 1:01:52 | |
-Who were the MCC observers? -On that occasion - it varied every year - | 1:01:52 | 1:01:57 | |
Gubby Allen and Arthur Gilligan, both former England captains. | 1:01:57 | 1:02:02 | |
Clearly, Gubby Allen and Gilligan knew | 1:02:02 | 1:02:05 | |
that if D'Oliveira was selected, there would be no tour, | 1:02:05 | 1:02:09 | |
that Vorster would not accept him. | 1:02:09 | 1:02:12 | |
How they conveyed this, or didn't convey it to the selectors | 1:02:12 | 1:02:17 | |
is one of the things that we don't know. | 1:02:17 | 1:02:21 | |
Though we may not know what was said at the meeting, | 1:02:21 | 1:02:25 | |
something can be discerned from the backgrounds of those present. | 1:02:25 | 1:02:29 | |
Gilligan, who was the president in 1968, | 1:02:29 | 1:02:32 | |
back in the 1930s had been a member of the British Union of Fascists, | 1:02:32 | 1:02:38 | |
and had contributed an article for their magazine | 1:02:38 | 1:02:42 | |
about the role of cricket tours, saying something to the effect that | 1:02:42 | 1:02:46 | |
cricket tours strengthened the bonds of kinship, by which he meant, | 1:02:46 | 1:02:51 | |
as the Fascists did, the bonds of racial kinship | 1:02:51 | 1:02:55 | |
among white people in the Empire. | 1:02:55 | 1:02:58 | |
They've always denied that there was a political discussion. | 1:02:58 | 1:03:03 | |
There were no real views as such. | 1:03:03 | 1:03:06 | |
For weeks, we'd been having messages from all sorts of sources | 1:03:06 | 1:03:11 | |
about whether it would be a good idea, and what might happen. | 1:03:11 | 1:03:16 | |
And the messages coming from Pretoria were never louder | 1:03:16 | 1:03:20 | |
than during that summer's Lord's Test against the Australians. | 1:03:20 | 1:03:24 | |
The South African Cricket Association's Arthur Coy, | 1:03:24 | 1:03:28 | |
a confidant of Prime Minister Vorster, was there. | 1:03:28 | 1:03:31 | |
Arthur Coy is sent over for the Lord's Test. | 1:03:31 | 1:03:35 | |
He's a guest of Lord Cobham, | 1:03:35 | 1:03:38 | |
who is considered a major friend of South African cricket. | 1:03:38 | 1:03:42 | |
And he speaks to people like Gilligan and Gubby Allen | 1:03:42 | 1:03:46 | |
off the record, that D'Oliveira would not be acceptable. | 1:03:46 | 1:03:51 | |
So, the president of the MCC knew. | 1:03:51 | 1:03:56 | |
And the treasurer of the MCC knew. | 1:03:56 | 1:03:59 | |
And the secretary of the MCC knew. Al were at the selection meeting. | 1:03:59 | 1:04:04 | |
-What was the issue about D'Oliveira? -Well, he was a black South African. | 1:04:04 | 1:04:09 | |
Well, erm, a coloured South African. | 1:04:09 | 1:04:13 | |
South Africa didn't allow coloured South Africans to...to, er... | 1:04:13 | 1:04:18 | |
play a part in their... | 1:04:18 | 1:04:21 | |
in their national sporting scene - it's as easy as that. | 1:04:21 | 1:04:25 | |
Doug Insole was chairman of the selectors who picked the team. | 1:04:25 | 1:04:30 | |
The others were Peter May, Alec Bedser, Don Kenyon | 1:04:30 | 1:04:35 | |
and, ex officio, the captain, Colin Cowdrey. | 1:04:35 | 1:04:38 | |
We can reveal that the only person who stood up for D'Oliveira | 1:04:38 | 1:04:42 | |
was Don Kenyon. | 1:04:42 | 1:04:45 | |
At the time of that selection, he had a Test batting average of 50. | 1:04:45 | 1:04:50 | |
An enormously high average, up there with the really great | 1:04:50 | 1:04:56 | |
IVA Ri..., I mean, it's superb. | 1:04:56 | 1:04:59 | |
He had very strong credentials, there's no question. | 1:04:59 | 1:05:02 | |
He was a very useful cricketer, and very popular in the side, | 1:05:02 | 1:05:06 | |
and that's why we picked him. | 1:05:06 | 1:05:09 | |
When the time came, we didn't pick him. | 1:05:09 | 1:05:12 | |
Doug Insole, what way do you reckon he voted? | 1:05:12 | 1:05:16 | |
Well, it appeared in the paper, didn't it? | 1:05:16 | 1:05:19 | |
As far as he was concerned, they picked the best side. | 1:05:19 | 1:05:24 | |
Ludicrously, the justification was the D'Oliveira's bowling | 1:05:24 | 1:05:29 | |
would be ineffective on South African wickets. | 1:05:29 | 1:05:32 | |
-What about Alec Bedser? -He's an important figure in this. | 1:05:32 | 1:05:36 | |
He later became a founder member of the Freedom Association, | 1:05:36 | 1:05:40 | |
which was a right-wing pressure group, | 1:05:40 | 1:05:44 | |
partly funded by the apartheid regime in South Africa, | 1:05:44 | 1:05:49 | |
as was declared in their accounts at the time, | 1:05:49 | 1:05:52 | |
for the purpose of lobbying in Britain for apartheid, | 1:05:52 | 1:05:56 | |
and for the South African system of white domination. | 1:05:56 | 1:06:01 | |
And here he was playing a key role in the decision | 1:06:01 | 1:06:05 | |
of whether to include Basil D'Oliveira in this tour. | 1:06:05 | 1:06:09 | |
They won't admit it was politics, and I'm sure for them it wasn't politics. | 1:06:09 | 1:06:14 | |
They believe they chose that team on merit. | 1:06:14 | 1:06:18 | |
But they were also aware, if they had included D'Oliveira, | 1:06:18 | 1:06:23 | |
the tour would have been cancelled. | 1:06:23 | 1:06:26 | |
It's a failure of moral imagination by the selectors. | 1:06:26 | 1:06:30 | |
Mind you, that is not what you choose them for. | 1:06:30 | 1:06:34 | |
They should have understood that the only thing to do | 1:06:34 | 1:06:38 | |
was to send Basil D'Oliveira back to South Africa. | 1:06:38 | 1:06:42 | |
Pressure mounted, inside and outside the MCC. | 1:06:42 | 1:06:46 | |
While they insisted that cricket should transcend politics, | 1:06:46 | 1:06:50 | |
and should not be tainted by this awful, murky world | 1:06:50 | 1:06:55 | |
of political intrigue and pressure groups, | 1:06:55 | 1:06:59 | |
what they're really saying is that only one kind of politics | 1:06:59 | 1:07:04 | |
should be allowed to taint cricket. | 1:07:04 | 1:07:07 | |
They were happy to have cricket tainted | 1:07:07 | 1:07:10 | |
by the racial politics of apartheid. | 1:07:10 | 1:07:13 | |
It's inner workings was laid open. | 1:07:13 | 1:07:16 | |
People began to question how the MCC worked, how cricket was run. | 1:07:16 | 1:07:20 | |
In the past, the MCC had always managed to avoid this. | 1:07:20 | 1:07:26 | |
You know, there's a concept of Englishness which cricket generates. | 1:07:26 | 1:07:31 | |
It can't take in all other concepts. | 1:07:31 | 1:07:34 | |
When you have such a basic clash that apartheid produced, it can't cope. | 1:07:34 | 1:07:38 | |
What it seeks to do is to disguise the basic clashes, | 1:07:38 | 1:07:42 | |
and say, "Ah, did he play correctly? Did he wear the right clothes? | 1:07:42 | 1:07:47 | |
"Were his flannels clean or not?" | 1:07:47 | 1:07:50 | |
Not whether it's right or wrong on essential moral issues. | 1:07:50 | 1:07:53 | |
Then came the twist. | 1:07:53 | 1:07:56 | |
Tom Cartwright, who had been chosen in preference to D'Oliveira, | 1:07:56 | 1:08:00 | |
turned out to be injured. | 1:08:00 | 1:08:03 | |
Now, this was the real catalyst of what happened with that tour. | 1:08:03 | 1:08:08 | |
He was never fit to be selected, because of a shoulder problem. | 1:08:08 | 1:08:12 | |
I knew that, yet the selectors took medical advice that he WAS fit. | 1:08:12 | 1:08:18 | |
Cartwright pulled out, and the selectors, who had been shocked | 1:08:18 | 1:08:22 | |
at the national outcry at D'Oliveira's non-selection, | 1:08:22 | 1:08:26 | |
now had no option but to choose him. | 1:08:26 | 1:08:29 | |
We were so happy. Now we can see Basil play at Newlands. | 1:08:29 | 1:08:33 | |
We were elated, but the South African government wasn't! | 1:08:33 | 1:08:38 | |
It was difficult. It became a make-up job, | 1:08:38 | 1:08:41 | |
a job that's not clean any more to me. | 1:08:41 | 1:08:45 | |
Now, they were clearly daring to pick a man | 1:08:45 | 1:08:48 | |
who, surely, was not going to be easily accepted | 1:08:48 | 1:08:53 | |
by the then government of South Africa. | 1:08:53 | 1:08:56 | |
And indeed, D'Oliveira's selection was to be a fateful decision. | 1:08:56 | 1:09:01 | |
His initial non-selection had let Vorster off a huge political hook. | 1:09:01 | 1:09:06 | |
The MCC selection committee made their choice on merit... | 1:09:06 | 1:09:11 | |
So they said, time and again, | 1:09:11 | 1:09:14 | |
and I accept that statement. | 1:09:14 | 1:09:17 | |
But, the moment the decision was known, | 1:09:17 | 1:09:21 | |
there was an outcry. | 1:09:21 | 1:09:24 | |
An outcry because a certain gentleman of colour | 1:09:24 | 1:09:29 | |
was omitted on merit by the MCC selection committee. | 1:09:29 | 1:09:35 | |
From then on, sir, D'Oliveira was no longer a sportsman... | 1:09:35 | 1:09:41 | |
but a cricket ball. | 1:09:43 | 1:09:45 | |
He claimed D'Oliveira was forced on the MCC by political pressure. | 1:09:45 | 1:09:51 | |
The team...as constituted now... | 1:09:51 | 1:09:56 | |
is not the team of the MCC. | 1:09:56 | 1:10:00 | |
It is the team of the anti-apartheid movement. | 1:10:00 | 1:10:04 | |
-APPLAUSE -He'd been let off the hook. | 1:10:04 | 1:10:09 | |
His cabinet had already decided the tour would be off. | 1:10:09 | 1:10:14 | |
I now say on behalf of South Africa, | 1:10:14 | 1:10:18 | |
whereas we were always prepared to play host to the MCC, | 1:10:18 | 1:10:24 | |
we are not prepared to receive a team thrust upon us. | 1:10:24 | 1:10:29 | |
-LOUD CHEERING -His prohibiting D'Oliveira | 1:10:29 | 1:10:34 | |
meant that he was able to appease that right-wing opinion, | 1:10:34 | 1:10:38 | |
and keep his leadership intact. | 1:10:38 | 1:10:41 | |
He can't... He can't play. | 1:10:41 | 1:10:44 | |
-He can't come to South Africa. -That was sad. | 1:10:44 | 1:10:47 | |
That was sad. | 1:10:47 | 1:10:50 | |
Sir Alec, what's your first reaction to Premier Vorster's announcement? | 1:10:50 | 1:10:55 | |
Well, one of disappointment for British cricket. | 1:10:55 | 1:10:59 | |
It'll be a long time before another tour can go to South Africa, | 1:10:59 | 1:11:03 | |
if Mr Vorster's words are final. | 1:11:03 | 1:11:06 | |
What would have happened if there hadn't been all the ballyhoo | 1:11:06 | 1:11:11 | |
about Mr D'Oliveira's non-selection, I don't know, | 1:11:11 | 1:11:15 | |
they might have taken the team, but this is a sad day for cricket. | 1:11:15 | 1:11:20 | |
The MCC committee decided unanimously | 1:11:20 | 1:11:23 | |
that the tour will not take place. | 1:11:23 | 1:11:26 | |
We were bitterly disappointed, but we admired the English authorities then | 1:11:26 | 1:11:31 | |
for cancelling the tour, and not saying they'd go without Basil. | 1:11:31 | 1:11:37 | |
The South African government had introduced race into sport. | 1:11:37 | 1:11:42 | |
Not even Hitler's Germany could prevent Jesse Owens running | 1:11:42 | 1:11:46 | |
in the 1936 Olympics - he actually ran in the Nazi Olympics in Berlin. | 1:11:46 | 1:11:51 | |
But under the South African system, | 1:11:51 | 1:11:54 | |
non-whites just did not play representative matches in any form. | 1:11:54 | 1:12:00 | |
The D'Oliveira issue crystallised it into one single issue of a man | 1:12:00 | 1:12:05 | |
who has chosen England, made his home here, proved himself, | 1:12:05 | 1:12:09 | |
gets selected, then a Prime Minister of a country making a speech | 1:12:09 | 1:12:13 | |
to his party congress, becoming an English cricket selector and saying, | 1:12:13 | 1:12:18 | |
"No, you can't select him." | 1:12:18 | 1:12:22 | |
It then became very symbolic in how sport and politics interact, | 1:12:22 | 1:12:26 | |
and in how sport and race interact. | 1:12:26 | 1:12:30 | |
Even those who were not political in South Africa, an average cricket fan, | 1:12:30 | 1:12:35 | |
who believed politics should be separate from cricket, | 1:12:35 | 1:12:40 | |
and adhered to that out of principle, were also angry | 1:12:40 | 1:12:44 | |
that a top England cricketer - that's what he'd become by 1968 - | 1:12:44 | 1:12:49 | |
was actually being excluded on an instruction of a foreign government. | 1:12:49 | 1:12:55 | |
-NEWSCAST: -'As the tour was finally bowled out by politics, | 1:12:55 | 1:12:58 | |
'D'Oliveira signed copies of his book.' | 1:12:58 | 1:13:01 | |
I would have been the only one, up till now, | 1:13:01 | 1:13:06 | |
who could have gone there, played on these grounds, | 1:13:06 | 1:13:10 | |
and mixing with people I, or the other non-whites in South Africa, | 1:13:10 | 1:13:15 | |
'had never been allowed to mix with before. | 1:13:15 | 1:13:19 | |
'If you go there, meet them on the same plane, the cricketing plane, | 1:13:19 | 1:13:24 | |
'say, a cocktail party, or on the field, or in the hotel, | 1:13:24 | 1:13:29 | |
'you're talking to people all the time, | 1:13:29 | 1:13:32 | |
'and you can put across to them that non-whites | 1:13:32 | 1:13:36 | |
'are not such bad people to live with.' | 1:13:36 | 1:13:39 | |
From then until even now, as I go round the world, | 1:13:39 | 1:13:43 | |
"You were set up." I still deny it because of my love for the game. | 1:13:43 | 1:13:48 | |
I don't want to destroy people. I want good cricket, and good players. | 1:13:48 | 1:13:54 | |
As far as I'm concerned, I've always abided by the laws made at Lord's | 1:13:54 | 1:14:00 | |
by administrators - I think Mr Billy Griffith's | 1:14:00 | 1:14:03 | |
and his colleagues, who make decisions, are men of integrity | 1:14:03 | 1:14:09 | |
and men that can be trusted all the way. | 1:14:09 | 1:14:13 | |
One of the great roles that he played in British society | 1:14:17 | 1:14:22 | |
is that he helped alert people to the existence of apartheid, | 1:14:22 | 1:14:27 | |
to the existence of a social system in South Africa that was nightmarish | 1:14:27 | 1:14:32 | |
and inhumane. | 1:14:32 | 1:14:34 | |
Basil was instrumental in all the outside sporting bodies | 1:14:34 | 1:14:38 | |
taking a stand against South Africa in terms of the politics. | 1:14:38 | 1:14:43 | |
Basil D'Oliveira's exclusion from the English cricket tour | 1:14:43 | 1:14:47 | |
at the instructions of the South African government | 1:14:47 | 1:14:52 | |
ignited real indignation in me. | 1:14:52 | 1:14:55 | |
It lit a fuse of real anger | 1:14:55 | 1:14:58 | |
that the cricket authorities here in England could still announce | 1:14:58 | 1:15:03 | |
they were inviting a white South African team, barely a year later. | 1:15:03 | 1:15:09 | |
The D'Oliveira scandal was the match which lit the successful | 1:15:09 | 1:15:14 | |
"Stop The '70 Tour" campaign, led by Peter Hain. | 1:15:14 | 1:15:17 | |
Basil D'Oliveira, as a victim of apartheid, actually helped, | 1:15:17 | 1:15:22 | |
perhaps unwittingly, to bring down sports apartheid at least. | 1:15:22 | 1:15:26 | |
Peter Hain and these guys got it right. | 1:15:26 | 1:15:30 | |
The way to bring about change was to do it through the sport. | 1:15:30 | 1:15:35 | |
The world sporting boycott moved this country faster to normalisation | 1:15:35 | 1:15:40 | |
than any other activity. | 1:15:40 | 1:15:44 | |
Because, you know, economic boycotts were...were, really... | 1:15:44 | 1:15:49 | |
in word only. | 1:15:49 | 1:15:52 | |
Once there wasn't international sport, | 1:15:52 | 1:15:55 | |
people starting saying, "Well, we want sport, we must make changes | 1:15:55 | 1:16:00 | |
"to bring it about." I think they got it absolutely right. | 1:16:00 | 1:16:05 | |
After the Australian tour of '79/'70, it was wilderness for 22 years, | 1:16:05 | 1:16:10 | |
until...until democracy. | 1:16:10 | 1:16:13 | |
It became such that those who played the sport in South Africa | 1:16:13 | 1:16:17 | |
on international level, they felt the pinch. | 1:16:17 | 1:16:21 | |
They were not having visitors, they were not welcome elsewhere. | 1:16:21 | 1:16:26 | |
So things had to change. And sport played a very valuable part | 1:16:26 | 1:16:31 | |
in the changeover of the set-up in this country. | 1:16:31 | 1:16:35 | |
In 2003, South Africa completed her international rehabilitation | 1:16:39 | 1:16:45 | |
into world sport, by hosting the cricket World Cup. | 1:16:45 | 1:16:49 | |
South African cricket is now united, | 1:16:54 | 1:16:57 | |
with equal opportunities for all cricketers, black and white. | 1:16:57 | 1:17:03 | |
It's a sports-mad country, and the isolation polities, | 1:17:03 | 1:17:07 | |
which gained momentum | 1:17:07 | 1:17:10 | |
and did isolate South Africa in sport, culture, and economically | 1:17:10 | 1:17:15 | |
had its effect, its impact on South Africa, | 1:17:15 | 1:17:19 | |
and ultimately saw the destruction of the racist regime. | 1:17:19 | 1:17:23 | |
The opening ceremony of the cricket World Cup was held at Newlands, | 1:17:25 | 1:17:30 | |
the Test ground in Cape Town, | 1:17:30 | 1:17:33 | |
where the young D'Oliveira was never allowed to play. | 1:17:33 | 1:17:38 | |
To symbolise the new democracy, he and the great batsman Graeme Pollock | 1:17:42 | 1:17:47 | |
led the parade of South African sporting heroes. | 1:17:47 | 1:17:51 | |
History will record the enormous role he played... | 1:17:51 | 1:17:57 | |
..in ultimately bringing down the apartheid government. | 1:17:58 | 1:18:02 | |
APPLAUSE | 1:18:04 | 1:18:07 | |
Basil had to go and show Vorster, | 1:18:08 | 1:18:11 | |
"This is what we can do." And he did it... | 1:18:11 | 1:18:15 | |
like nobody else could. | 1:18:15 | 1:18:18 | |
When Basil walked out at Newlands, that was a marvellous gesture. | 1:18:18 | 1:18:23 | |
He walked out first, ahead of Graeme. | 1:18:23 | 1:18:26 | |
The fact that he walked out first, | 1:18:26 | 1:18:29 | |
that put Basil in his rightful place, that's how I felt. | 1:18:29 | 1:18:34 | |
I just said, "OK, Bas?" "Yes." | 1:18:34 | 1:18:38 | |
I really felt... That was the day I felt, "Thank you, Lord." | 1:18:38 | 1:18:44 | |
-ANNOUNCER: -Ladies and gentlemen, | 1:18:44 | 1:18:47 | |
the teams of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2003! | 1:18:47 | 1:18:52 | |
CHEERING | 1:18:52 | 1:18:55 | |
BASIL CHUCKLES Basil, you got to walk on Newlands. | 1:18:57 | 1:19:00 | |
I said I was going to do it, and you've backed me, and there we are. | 1:19:00 | 1:19:06 | |
Who knows? I might make a come-back! | 1:19:06 | 1:19:09 | |
HE CHUCKLES | 1:19:09 | 1:19:13 | |
Bearing in mind that Basil played Test cricket between 35 and 40, | 1:19:16 | 1:19:22 | |
he's got 2,500 runs, five centuries, 15 half-centuries, | 1:19:22 | 1:19:27 | |
he was Wisden Cricketer of the Year, | 1:19:27 | 1:19:30 | |
he scored the fastest century in Test cricket, | 1:19:30 | 1:19:34 | |
all at the age 35 and upwards. | 1:19:34 | 1:19:37 | |
Subtitles by BBC Broadcast - 2004 | 1:20:09 | 1:20:12 | |
E-mail us at [email protected] | 1:20:12 | 1:20:15 |