Half A Century On The D'oliveira Affair ​​​​​​​

This month marks half a century since the talent of an African born-and-bred cricketer shook up the world game and ushered in the demise of his continents last racist regime. It was an international tale of skulduggery, bravery, tears and toil that they called The DOliveira Affair.

- Chris Bishop

As I write, a young professional cricketer is pounding the boundary in the footsteps of his principled grandfather; a man who dared to follow his dream in the face of inequality and helped change the world in the process.

Twenty-six-year-old Brett D’Oliveira was flitting across the lush greensward at New Road, in Worcester, in search of victory and top league survival for the county that is in his family’s blood – Worcestershire. The name is as synonymous with the club as the massive 1,200-year-old Norman Worcester Cathedral that dominates the skyline over the ground. When the cathedral bells boom on the hour on a balmy summer’s evening amid the butterflies, blue skies and the crack of leather on willow, it is a slice of heaven.

On this 122-year-old cricket ground, by the River Severn, the D’Oliveira family has plied its trade for three generations scoring more than 30,000 first class runs as well as a shining victory over the dull idea that people should live in the shadows because of the color of their skin. His late father Damian hit the ball around this ground, as if he hated it; so did his grandfather, who also represented England, and was at the heart of an international storm when barred from doing so in 1968.

Basil D’Oliveira, who died in 2011 aged 80, was a broad-shouldered, lion-hearted cricketer who could turn a game with a mighty six or a wicket with his sharp, accurate, medium-paced bowling. His family remember him as a man of few words, who did his talking on the pitch. He was as brave as he was talented; in a cup final at Lord’s in 1976, against Kent, he pulled a hamstring and hobbled on in agony to flog a defiant half century.

By the time I was a cricket-mad teenager growing up in Worcestershire, D’Oliveira, or Dolly as many called him, was a household name that inspired us young hopefuls.