Lives in Cricket No 27 - CB Llewellyn

113 Afterwards wall’ incident, not necessarily one of great moment, referred to in Chapter Fifteen of this book. In 1987, Omar Henry’s selection for South Africa at Durban again brought Buck’s ancestry to the public domain. While Charles Fortune was providing the commentary on the match, he quoted from a letter he had received from a listener asking if Henry was the first coloured man to play for his country. The 82-year-old Fortune was, in addition to being a journalist and broadcaster, a former Secretary of the South African Cricket Association, and he disclosed that Buck was the son of a Welsh serviceman and a coloured mother. He said he had gleaned this information from the SACA minutes – some of which had been destroyed in a fire! When we look back on Llewellyn’s career, nearly fifty years after his death, his decision to move to England in 1899 can be viewed as both brave and sensible, in making best use of the skills which he had developed in his youth, to escape the growth of racist attitudes at home. He must have realised the wisdom of his decision when, after his great success against the Australians at home in the autumn of 1902, attempts to reunite him with the South African domestic game were frustrated, on the grounds that he was a professional cricketer. This was not long before this disqualification was removed by amendment to the rules, but too late to help him. At international level his reputation kept him in the eye of the South African selectors for Test matches abroad, at least for another ten years. Buck’s decision to live as a white man among whites denied him the opportunity to make issue about any incidents of discrimination which he may have faced, and perhaps explains why none were recorded. His well-known reference to Warwick Armstrong’s comment before the Edgbaston Test match in 1902 – hardly offensive anyway – loses what force it may have had, when we learn that later that year, after Armstrong had carried his bat through the innings for 159 not out, at The Wanderers, and was presented with the ball, Llewellyn gave him a cigarette case – hardly an indication of hostility between them. How did Buck successfully maintain his pretensions to be a white man? Patrick Ferriday gives as the explanation a combination of influential friends, great cricketing talent, relatively light skin colour – and deliberate myopia. What summary could be more apt? As I was completing this chapter, there came the news of the death