S Berry: D'Oliveira Goes Back To His Roots (27 Nov 1995)

Electronic Telegraph Monday 27 November 1995

D`Oliveira goes back to his roots

Scyld Berry joins a sporting hero on an emotional return to his birthplace after 28 long years

IT IS still there. The house where Basil d`Oliveira lived, from the age of two months until he left for England in his 30th year, is still standing on the side of Signal Hill in Cape Town. It has changed in the course of half a century, but not half so much as the man who grew up there.

When he set out on his history-shaping journey in 1960, d`Oliveira was a talented player in non-white club cricket. Within a dozen years he had risen through league cricket to county cricket for Worcestershire and Test cricket for England; he had scored 2,484 Test runs at an average of 40, when way past his best by his own estimation, and taken 47 Test wickets; he had been honoured with an OBE and a This Is Your Life programme; he had been entertained by Harold Wilson and advised by Sir Alec Douglas-Home. Above all, he had not simply been a mere pawn in the political power-games.

The d`Oliveiras lived in the upper storey of a house too modest to be called a villa; but it was soundly built by Malays on a steep-sided hill which has a Mediterranean flavour, perhaps that of a Greek island. In the tiny dining area the infant boy would plead in English to his father to bowl at him, just as intensely as Basil`s two-year-old grandson now pleads to him in Worcester. D`Oliveira has come to believe Test cricketers are born not made.

His father, Lewis, was a tailor who worked for a Jewish clothing company in Cape Town and who made clothes at home in his spare time: Basil`s first job was to trim the threads off new suits. Lewis was also an enthusiastic club cricketer: "He was St Augustine`s," his son recalls. The club played in the Metropolitan League and drew upon Cape Coloureds from Signal Hill and, in particular, District Six beneath Table Mountain - until its people were evicted and the area bulldozed by government order.

"My mother used to have stand-up rows with my father because he used all the money he had to keep the club going. He used to have rows with me too if I got out by hitting the ball in the air. He`d go bloody spare and I`d sneak up the stairs and hide. He used to lean on these railings when he had cancer and watch me in the street below."

As he grew up, Basil played in the steep `lane`, in fact a tiny passageway, beside his house. He would bat at the bottom of some steps, and have a friend bowl at him from the top of them, and hook and cut into the street below. Last Thursday morning he joined some children in the street, and faced up to the bowling of a boy whose mother had told him all about Basil d`Oliveira; and though decades have passed, and both hips have been replaced, he waited on the back foot just as calm and poised as he was when England`s No 6.

them. That`s why I could never resist hitting the ball in the air`

In excited recognition he pointed out the lamp-posts against which he had played. "I was organiser-in-chief," he said. He would send out word in dialect Afrikaans to six or seven friends to come and represent Bloem Street against some rival street. `Test matches` would take place until dark, provided somebody kept a look-out for the police. He still has a bump on his head from the one time they caught him.

"You see those electric wires? We`d get six if we hit the tennis ball over them. That`s why I could never resist hitting the ball in the air." At this stage we need his older sister, Sybil, to intervene, and to remind him: Basil would often organise a game on his way back up the hill from shopping, and he would blithely leave the food for the evening meal behind the lamp-post, until she came to collect it.

Since his Catholic school at the end of the street, like all non-white schools of the period, had no facilities for organised games, his first formal cricket came at 15 when he batted No 3 for St Augustine`s only XI. They would roll out a pitch on the common and collect the coir matting from a shed, but the stones around the field were too many to gather. Soon after he left for England, the common was taken over; and when he went back last week, he found that his first cricket ground had become the Greek Community Centre and a football pitch.

It has been calculated that d`Oliveira hit 80 centuries in nonwhite cricket. He played for the Western Province Board XI - that was, the non-white provincial team. He played for the Cape Coloureds against the Muslims and the Bantus, as they were then termed, in annual tournaments, in the Christmas holidays, when the players from other provinces arrived by lorry and slept in a school hall. By January 1960 he had done all he could do, and was going to retire from sport for want of fulfillable ambition.

When the invitation arrived from Middleton to be their professional in the Central Lancashire League, he didn`t know at first what to do. He had not played on grass; he had not been outside South Africa; he had not even touched an alcoholic drink (he has subsequently had one or two). But Benny the barman, now long dead, urged him with a prophet`s foresight: "If you do well, we`ll all do well."

And would you believe, cricketers of all colours rallied round: in particular d`Oliveira blesses the memory of Gerald Innes, the white former captain of Western Province, who defied the pass laws and organised a multi-racial match which raised enough money to cover his airfare and more.

It is well-documented that he had four prolific seasons for Middleton, before becoming a regular for Worcestershire in 1965 and for England the following year. Less well-known is the reaction when he returned home in September 1960 after that first season.

The D`Oliveira Affair ignited, and in large part incensed, the nation. He received 2,000 letters, of which one was against him, and that from a South African living in England

>From the docks he was conducted in a motorcade, led by a Malay band, to a reception by the Mayor of Cape Town, and cheered en route by thousands of people of all colours. For that day, at any rate, officialdom made him an honorary white. More than that, a sportsman had touched a communal chord in South Africa.

In 1968, after scoring 158 in the last Test at the Oval to help defeat Australia, d`Oliveira was omitted from the England (then MCC) party to tour South Africa. Political uproar ensued. "It was awful," he recalled last week. "My wife went grey overnight. My kids walked down the street in Worcester and kept asking why their name was on posters."

The D`Oliveira Affair ignited, and in large part incensed, the nation. He received 2,000 letters, of which one was against him, and that from a South African living in England. The public were behind `Dolly`: and it is worth noting here that his favourite crowd, who supported him most, was always that of Headingley. But to this day he believes that of England`s cricket establishment, only one person spoke to him sincerely.

He received some advice from the highest quarters. "Colin Cowdrey took me to Sir Alec Douglas-Home`s flat, and the place was strewn with papers, as he had to give a speech. It was about 11 in the morning and the gin bottle came out, but I don`t think I had any. `Whatever you do,` he said, `stay on the cricket field.` I thought that was valuable advice. I wasn`t a political animal, so I told anti-apartheid politicians: `Use what I`ve done, but don`t use me`."

He thinks that it was "out of embarrassment" that the selectors finally chose him to fill the vacancy when Tom Cartwright dropped out before the tour. He was a batsman, Cartwright a bowler; but out of shame a wrong was rectified.

He makes the point too that it was the South African government which then cancelled the England tour of 1968-9: "Remember it was they who decided to stop playing with England, not the other way round." Around this time Pretoria made similar threats, to cancel visits by the All Blacks if they included Maori rugby players. The years of sporting, then economic, boycotts were under way.

D`Oliveira still believes the South African businessman who offered him the then fabulous sum of #50,000 to make himself unavailable for England - so the tour could proceed without him - was acting on behalf of the Vorster government. More than that, he does not want "to rake it all up again. Most of the other people involved are dead".

It would be wonderful to record that, on his return to his native country, the human spirit has triumphed and bygones are long gone by. However, although he attended the first Test at Centurion Park, and twice walked in front of the hospitality box belonging to the United Cricket Board of South Africa, he says he has yet to receive any welcome or invitation (never mind an apology) from their officials.

To talk to other white South Africans about Basil d`Oliveira is to get the impression that they hold him responsible for their country`s isolation, not the defects of their society.

The words of Hello Dolly unfortunately don`t appear to apply in this case: "It`s so nice to have you back where you belong."

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/et/)