Basil D'Oliveira

Basil Lewis D'Oliveira CBE (born 4 October 1931, Cape Town) is a retired South African born cricketer. D'Oliveira was classified as 'coloured' under the apartheid regime, and hence barred from first-class cricket. He captained South Africa's national non-white cricket team, and also played football for the non-white national side. D'Oliveira played in forty four Test matches, and four ODIs for England. Despite his cricketing prowess, he is best known for his role in the "D'Oliveira affair", centered around his inclusion in the England side for a planned tour to South Africa in 1968.

Life and career

With the support of John Arlott, and the members and supporters of St Augustine's Cricket Club in Cape Town, he emigrated to England in 1960, where the journalist John Kay found him a place in his Central Lancashire League team of Middleton. He joined the first-class county Worcestershire in 1964 and became a British citizen. By 1966, he was being selected for England, as an all-rounder, and he was one of the Wisden cricketers of the year for 1967.

D'Oliveira played the first Test of the 1968 series against...
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