Basil D'Oliveira

Basil D'Oliveira grew up in Signal Hill, Cape Town, classified as Cape Coloured under the racial laws of South Africa. He was a brilliant batsman, but the pitches he played on were matting laid over gravel, and the grounds with grass were for whites only. He captained non-white South African teams and scored heavily, and no one who mattered noticed. In his late twenties he wrote to the cricket commentator John Arlott asking for help. Arlott found him a professional contract in the Lancashire leagues at Middleton, and in 1960 D'Oliveira arrived in a cold, unfamiliar England with almost no money.

He was probably older than he admitted, and he struggled at first. But he learned to play on grass, joined Worcestershire in 1964 and made his England debut in 1966, aged, by his own account, 34. He was a steady middle-order batsman and a useful bowler, and in 1968 he scored 158 against Australia at the Oval.

He was then left out of the tour party to South Africa, in what looked like an attempt to avoid embarrassing the apartheid government. The outcry was enormous. When another player withdrew injured, he was added, and South Africa's prime minister declared the team unacceptable. The tour was cancelled, and it was the beginning of South Africa's long exclusion from international sport.

He played for England until 1972 and coached at Worcestershire for years afterwards. He died in 2011.