Whenever I think of that beautiful cricket ground at New Road, Worcester, I still think first, more than thirty years since he played there, of Basil D’Oliveira. It is, by common consent, the most English of cricket grounds and Dolly, for all of the drama which brought him to that peaceful place from less tranquil circumstances so far away, can truly be said to have settled into it as to the manor born.
In nearby Malvern, Edward Elgar composed the very soundtrack to England. Off the pitch, D’Oliveira’s poise was as dignified as the ninth Enigma Variation, Nimrod. In the middle, he had poise of a different kind: up on his toes, back perfectly straight and with bat raised elegantly in follow-through like the sword of a knight, he might have been driving to the strains of a Pomp and Circumstance march.
The apartheid regime of South Africa had sought, of course, to cordon off D’Oliveira in a much less inviting environment. It was this evil ideology which had compelled him to head for the green and pleasant land, first to the dark, satanic leagues of Lancashire, thence to shine forth from the shadow of those clouded, Malvern Hills.
Therein lies a magnificent irony. If Basil D’Oliveira’s gentlemanly manners became synonymous in my mind, and many other minds too, with the quintessentially English surroundings of New Road, one thinks of those boorish Boers such as Johannes Vorster and P.W. Botha, who sought to categorise him as an untouchable, and finds it quite impossible to imagine them blending so well, or indeed at all, into such respectable circles. Perhaps it was social jealousy which chewed them up, a delicious thought which sweetens by a degree the memories of that sour autumn of ‘68.
Not that Dolly was boringly angelic; he famously enjoyed a drink or two, but that only served to anglicise him yet more – his favourite tipple was pale ale.