Lives in Cricket No 10 - John Shepherd

pressure on D’Oliveira to withdraw – which he duly did and the tour plans collapsed as a result. The fundamental question that was to be in play over the long years of South Africa’s cricket isolation was, nominally in any case, not that of the rights or wrongs of apartheid. With few exceptions those who sought to keep the door open ritually expressed their opposition to the apartheid system but they did not see that this opposition should be expressed in a boycott. Cowdrey, for example, said in his 1976 autobiography: ‘[The South Africans] have had enough of the admonishing finger; much more will be achieved by warmth and goodwill from outside’. 75 Four years later Ray Illingworth was to say that one of his ‘earnest wishes’ was ‘to see South Africa back in Test cricket’. Illingworth went on to say that ‘The South African authorities were asked to achieve greater integration of black and Cape Coloured players and they did it.’ 76 And in his 1984 autobiography 77 Bob Woolmer, in a chapter called ‘No to Apartheid, Yes to Cricket’ said ‘… apartheid is heinous, but South Africa should be brought back into Test cricket and should have been permitted to return years ago’. He went on to say that ‘Slogans such as “You can’t play normal sport in an abnormal society” … are merely glib.’ The contrary position was perhaps best expressed by John Arlott who in a debate in November 1969 said: It is political commitment and political belief that can make a man think that his opponent’s views are so obnoxious that he will abstain from playing any game against him, as a protest against what the other man believes and also, lest it be assumed that by taking part in any activity with the supporters of that view, he gives his tacit approval. 78 At the same debate Wilf Wooller put the case that some in the world of cricket felt strongly – which was that sport, and cricket especially, was being discriminated against. Wooller said: ‘Why should MPs suggest we should not play against South Africa when they’re [big business] busy trading with South Africa?’ He added: ‘If you bring politics into our sport, you’re going to destroy the last bastion of sanity we have.’ On the one hand many in the cricket world just wanted to play cricket and wanted the game of cricket somehow to be divorced from politics. Over time apologists for continuing cricketing ties latched on to the fact that some progress was being made towards the breaking down of the racial barriers in cricket and argued that more contact, especially actually playing against the South Africans, would further this process. On the other hand those who strongly opposed such contact did so on the not unreasonable grounds that to play cricket in or with a country that practised the Honorary White 67 75 Colin Cowdrey, M.C.C.: The Autobiography of a Cricketer , Hodder and Stoughton, 1976. 76 Ray Illingworth, Yorkshire and Back , Queen Anne Press, 1980. 77 Bob Woolmer, Pirate and Rebel? , Arthur Barker, 1984. Bob was not a politician. He said in the same book that ‘If the country were to be ruled overnight by the African community without the skills of the white man, it would be difficult to see how it could survive…’ 78 Quoted by David Rayvern Allen, in Arlott, HarperCollins, 1994.