LONDON: South Africa on Tuesday night withdrew into further isolation from world sport by barring an English cricket team with a coloured player. Eighty years of cricket matches between the two countries were sundered by a South African refusal to allow England’s team to tour the country this winter with a 33-year-old Mulatto named Basil D’Oliveira.

South African Prime Minister B.J. Vorster called D’Oliveira “a political cricket ball” and accused England’s selectors of bowing to pressure from leftist groups opposing South Africa’s racial segregation laws. It all amounted to a political collision that left South Africa more than ever alone in the world of sport.

Vorster recognised that fact by referring to what he called the Olympic scandal — the exclusion of South Africa from the Mexico City Games.

D’Oliveira, a mild mannered batsman and bowler who migrated from his native South Africa in order to play first class cricket with white teams is now a British citizen. He was picked for the South African tour after originally being omitted from the team — a decision that set off the greatest row in English cricket history. “The London Daily Mail” declared in an editorial [that] all Vorster has succeeded in doing is to remind us of the barbarous realities of apartheid. — Agency

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2018