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192 pages

English

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In 1968, cricket was at the forefront of global opposition to Apartheid as the Basil D'Oliveira affair proved a watershed in the sporting boycott against South Africa. Yet the boycott was repeatedly breached - teams from England, the West Indies, Australia and Sri Lanka toured South Africa in defiance of the sanctions, playing unofficial matches to meet the voracious demand of a sports-hungry white populace. Peter May provides an essential narrative on how events unfolded and a lucid analysis of the sporting, political and moral context.

Sujets

Sociologie, société et politique

Republic of South Africa

Críquet

South Africa

Cricket

Afrique du Sud

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Publié par	Sportsbooks
Date de parution	15 octobre 2009
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781907524141
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0900€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Acknowledgements
This is not a topic that people are desperate to talk about so special thanks are due to all who agreed to be interviewed: Dennis Amiss, Norman Arendse, Jimmy Cook, Michael Holding, Geoff Humpage, David Kenvyn, Peter Kirsten, Adrian Kuiper, Garth Le Roux, Mike Procter, Barry Richards, Greg Shipperd, Mike Terry, Vince van der Bijl, Bob Willis and Sir Nicholas Winterton. Numerous players across all tours were invited to contribute but ignored or declined my enquiries; only one offered the unimprovable, irony-free response, ‘What’s in it for me?’
I am grateful to Randall Northam and SportsBooks for both the opportunity and support. My colleague Tristan Holme was less a research assistant than a sorcerer, conjuring up outstanding material time and again. Lerato Malekutu at Cricket South Africa was a great help in the southern hemisphere. Interviews with Sky Sports commentators Michael Holding and Bob Willis were courtesy of James Motley and Sky. Richard Burgess kindly dug out and dispatched a copy of his BBC radio documentary.
In addition I have been fortunate to rely on a support team so numerous they put the modern England set-up to shame. Lynda Thompson helped me get started. Tom Ezard, Stephen May, Dave Roche and Pete Webber provided insightful commentary from the early drafts; Carl Cullinane, Guy Fletcher, John McGee and Ben Parsons joined the fray later with valuable new perspective. Lucy Jefferson was an indispensable friend, flat-mate and purveyor of terrible 1980s cop films. Kevie and Dave Gordon graciously offered bed, breakfast and Baltimore on countless occasions. Pete Manson has the finest air mattress in London and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Their time and generosity, and the backing of many other friends and family members, are hugely appreciated.
Endless gratitude is due to Nóra Bairéad, the one person without whom this would never have been completed. She is my favourite for her patience, belief, encouragement and humour. Finally I thank my parents for their constant interest and support.
All errors and omissions are, of course, solely my responsibility.
Peter May
May 2009
Contents
Title page
Acknowledgements
Introduction

Chapter 1 The Sport that Rocked the World
Chapter 2 Making the Unthinkable Thinkable
Chapter 3 This Dirty Dozen
Chapter 4 Of Caps and Cuckoos
Chapter 5 Mercenaries and Missionaries
Chapter 6 A Memorable Series
Chapter 7 C’mon, Au$$ie
Chapter 8 End of the Road
Chapter 9 Does Everyone Know Where they Stand?

Afterword
Schedules and Results
Bibliography
Index
Copyright
Introduction
The rebel cricket tours to apartheid South Africa rank among the most extraordinary sporting ventures. Between 1982 and 1990 seven teams defied international boycott action to visit the republic, prompting anger and condemnation throughout the world game and far beyond. The tours threatened the future of international cricket and brought those who took part public opprobrium and in some cases personal and professional ruin. Despite the intense controversy, the rebel tours have received little retrospective examination. This is the story of one of the greatest cricket crises.
The genesis of the tours was the D’Oliveira affair, which in 1968 brought apartheid to the attention of many people for the first time. South Africa was excluded from international competition until it dismantled racism in cricket; the game was then appropriated as a tool to exert pressure on the South African government in other ways. International condemnation of apartheid was all but universal, but there was intense disagreement on the commitment to and effectiveness of competing efforts to bring about its demise. Accusations of hypocrisy, racism and appeasement were rife. Once placed on the front line in the battle against apartheid, cricket remained there until the fall of the regime more than two decades later.
The rebel tours were South Africa’s answer to isolation. Administrators secretly agreed huge salaries with unofficial international teams to play acclaimed ‘Tests’ and ‘one-day internationals’ against officially recognised Springbok XIs. When the first rebel tour, by an English squad, revealed their plans by arriving in Johannesburg in February 1982, the reaction was sensational. Few sporting ventures have generated such extensive front-page coverage while the fury in India, Pakistan and the West Indies threatened a ‘black–white’ split in international cricket. In subsequent seasons the South African authorities continued to provoke international anger with unofficial tours from Sri Lanka, the West Indies and Australia. Each visit boasted its own characteristics and costs, but all renewed cricket’s instability while feeding a wider atmosphere of antagonism.
Behind the international outrage and domestic hype, the matches represent an anomaly in the game’s history. They provided a platform for great figures such as Graeme Pollock, Barry Richards and Mike Procter, and a new challenge for a forgotten generation of outstanding players led by Clive Rice, Peter Kirsten and Vince van der Bijl. While the least among the tourists are understandably forgotten by cricket history, some illustrious names visited the republic: Graham Gooch and Geoffrey Boycott; Lawrence Rowe and Colin Croft; Kim Hughes and Terry Alderman. There were some dramatic contests and outstanding individual contributions but the matches were repeatedly undermined by other influences. Player strikes, poor umpiring and schedules driven by commercial rather than common sense all conspired. World-weary cricket followers might think these make the tours all too ordinary but the shadow of the South African government never fully receded.
Apartheid remained entwined with international cricket to the very end when a final rebel party, led by Mike Gatting, was tempted to the republic in 1989–90. Cricket and politics collided with formidable force once again. As FW De Klerk prepared to release Nelson Mandela, non-white South Africa began to vent decades of frustration and fury with English cricketers the focal point.
This book traces the full history of these remarkable tours, beginning with the sporting boycott (Chapter 1) and tumultuous 1970s (Chapter 2) before detailing the on-and off-field story of the tours themselves (Chapters 3 to 9) to provide a comprehensive account of their organisation, conduct and fall-out.
Chapter 1
The Sport that Rocked the World
‘When one side in a cricket match insists on the right to select both sides, then reality has degenerated into Mad Hatterism.’ – Benny Green
Nineteen sixty-eight was ‘the year that rocked the world’. Momentous events proliferated: the end of the US civil rights movement, the beginning of the end of the Vietnam war, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and the first manned Apollo missions, Apollo 7 and Apollo 8; Swaziland, Mauritius and Equatorial Guinea attained independence as European colonial influence continued to disintegrate across Africa and Asia; in Paris mai ’68 brought the country to the brink of revolution and ultimately proved a watershed for French society; demonstrators the other side of the Iron Curtain were not so fortunate in defeat as the Soviet Union met attempted reforms in Prague with brutal military force and Polish political unrest was repressed through anti-Semitic purges.
Against this backdrop a cancelled cricket tour might have been a frivolous diversion but instead boasted profound consequences, a remarkable tale born of endeavour and resilience that changed not only cricket but the world far beyond. Among the most celebrated episodes in sporting history, it is now known simply as the D’Oliveira affair.
Immediately after scoring a feted 158 against Australia at The Oval in August 1968 Basil D’Oliveira was omitted from the MCC’s England squad to tour South Africa the following winter, a decision roundly denounced as a political betrayal. The ruling National Party government in South Africa had since 1948 legislated the policies of apartheid – literally ‘separateness’ in Afrikaans; this amounted to institutional segregation of the population by spurious racial groupings, with the ruling white minority afforded economic, political and social supremacy over the other race classifications, ‘blacks’, ‘Indians’ and ‘coloureds’. Cape Town-born all-rounder D’Oliveira was a brilliant right-handed batsman who had been classified as coloured and thus excluded from first-class cricket despite spectacular success in the non-white leagues. He had emigrated in 1960 to fulfil his ambition to become a professional cricketer, gaining British citizenship during a rapid rise from the Lancashire League to county side Worcestershire and then the England Test team. The prospect of his appearance for the MCC in the republic – and particularly that of a ‘Cape coloured’ hitting the white Springboks to the four corners of Newlands, where D’Oliveira’s peers were segregated in an area known as The Cage and allowed onto the field only to tend the grass – tormented the South African government.
Much later it became public that the omission was indeed politically influenced, with the South African Prime Minister BJ Vorster himself actively lobbying the MCC committee throughout 1968. *1 But the public controversy in England was too great for Lord’s to resist and, following Warwickshire all-rounder Tom Cartwright’s timely withdrawal through injury, D’Oliveira was called up as his replacement.
This belated about-face provoked ire among the South African establishment, who, though unsuccessful in separate, secret one-to-one attempts to bribe D’Oliveira to stay away, thought they had done enough backroom manoeuvring with the MCC to ensure his exclusion. On the day that D’Oliveira’s selection was announced, Vorster w