Basil D’Oliveira, who died on this day in 2011, was the central figure in one of the greatest crises in cricket history. This Wisden Almanack obituary traced his remarkable story.
D’Olivera, Basil Lewis, CBE, died on November 18, 2011. He was generally thought to have been 80. Basil D’Oliveira was a fine cricketer who, in more normal circumstances, could have played far more than 44 Tests. But the miracle of his life was that he played any at all. His story, and the 1968 crisis known as the D’Oliveira Affair, had consequences that reverberated far beyond cricket and would define Basil’s life. The man himself was not a secular saint or a political campaigner: he was, above all else, a cricketer.
D’Oliveira was born in Cape Town and grew up in the then segregated Coloured area known as Signal Hill. That much is certain; the date is more problematic. When he first arrived in England in 1960, he said he had been born in 1935. According to Pat Murphy, who ghosted Basil’s 1980 autobiography Time to Declare, he revised that figure twice, first to 1933, then to 1931. Wisden adds to the confusion, starting with 1934 then settling on 1931. But in the book D’Oliveira hinted he was even older, and Murphy said he saw a photocopy of a birth certificate saying 1928, making him 37 when he first played for England, 43 when he fended off the Australian attack in 1972, and 83 when he died.
Whatever his age, he was a phenomenon – and he would achieve an honour usually accorded only to all-time greats when, in 2004, it was announced that future Test series between England and South Africa would be for the Basil D’Oliveira Trophy.
D’Oliveira had always been a good watcher – he worked out how to pick the Australian mystery spinner John Gleeson – and he was a conscientious, tough and effective coach, if stronger on the importance of mental attitude than on the minutiae of technique. And his essential decency shone through in odd ways. The former county secretary Mike Vockins remembered him being saddled with a coaching commitment at a school in Redditch on a snowy day. He was not sure he could make it, so he drove there in the morning to convince himself it was possible, then went back to do the job in the afternoon. Basil also became a proud patriarch.
His son Damian played 14 seasons for Worcestershire, and in 2011 his grandson Brett followed them into the team, and also became the fourth generation of D’Oliveiras to play for St Augustine’s. By then dementia had overcome Basil, but his family – led by the staunch Naomi – sustained him. And he was revered across the cricket world, most of all, far from Worcester, in the country that once spurned him.
