The Order of Ikhamanga in Silver

Basil D’Oliviera (1931 – 2011) Awarded for:

Outstanding achievement in the field of Cricket and contribution to non-racial sport.

Basil ‘Dolly’ D’Oliviera was born in 1931 in District Six in Cape Town.

A keen cricketer from an early age, D’Oliviera excelled at cricket but soon reached an artificial ceiling in his own country because he was excluded from the possibility of representing his country due to the racist policies of the Apartheid regime.

‘Dolly’was recommended to a league club in England and went on to play for England in 1966. In 1968 he was selected for the MCC tour of South Africa, but the Apartheid government would not approve of such a challenge to its racial policies and promptly cancelled the tour.

Basil D’Oliviera campaigned untiringly for the exclusion of racist South Africa from international sport in general and cricket in particular.