The postman rarely came to Upper Bloem Street, high above Cape Town, home of the D’Oliveira family. The D’Oliveiras kept themselves to themselves. They rarely went outside the little district in which they lived.

Letters were rare things, to be greeted with trepidation. In January of 1960, the postman climbed the steps to the first-floor apartment that Basil shared with his pretty bride of just two months, Naomi. She solemnly took the letter to her husband, who still lay in bed. He was not a layabout, quite the contrary, but this was a Saturday morning.

D’Oliveira, designated a “Cape Coloured” under the apartheid system, played sport or trained every hour of the day when he was not at work. He was a famous sportsman, although his celebrity did not extend far beyond his own community. He was the greatest cricketer in non-white South Africa. But his life was defined and constricted by South Africa’s racialism.

D’Oliveira’s achievements were legendary among his own people. His massive forearms and huge body strength enabled him to strike the ball with prodigious power. Once, aged just 21, he had hit seven sixes and one four in an eight-ball over. Two years later, in an awesome display of savagery, he struck 225 in only 70 minutes, out of a team score of 236, including 16 sixes. White South Africa neither knew nor cared that its country harboured a genius.

Like millions of his countrymen, and without much resentment, D’Oliveira was in the course of resigning himself to a third-class life. The letter changed that. It contained sensational news. Middleton, an English cricket club in the Lancashire leagues, was offering him a professional contract.

Basil brought the letter out into the living room and put it in his young wife’s hand. As he passed it over, he said, “What do you think?” He already knew what he thought. The offer had come too late. Two years ago, even six months ago, it might all have been different, but now he was married. He was set on a fresh course of life. But Naomi pushed him away, telling him, “You must go. This is our only chance.”

One month later Basil and Naomi’s families came to the airport to see him off. D’Oliveira turned to wave as he walked up the steps on to the plane, but he did not feel brave. At the last moment he badly wanted to turn back, but he felt that he dare not retreat. “All I can remember,” says Naomi today, “is his parents and my parents. We were all there, and that plane disappeared. I could see it growing smaller and smaller , and then that little fleck disappeared. And that really touched me deeply because I did not know where he was going.” Naomi D’Oliveira does not cry often, but she was inconsolable then.

Many rebuffs and humiliations lay in store in the months that followed, but D’Oliveira was a success at Middleton, and four years later, he went to play first-class cricket for Worcestershire. Then, at the end of May 1966, the impossible happened.

D’Oliveira was playing in a friendly game at Beaconsfield when there was an interruption. Over the loudspeaker somebody read out the names of the England team to play West Indies in the first Test. Ron Headley was batting with D’Oliveira at the time. The two batsmen agreed to stop playing while the names were read out. D’Oliveira could make no sense of what was said through the crackling loudspeaker. Then Headley wandered down the pitch: “I’ll tell you something — you’re in the side.” When D’Oliveira got back to the pavilion, he found a telephone and rang Naomi. “Have you heard the news?” he asked.

“What news?” “I’ve just been named in the 12 to play for England.”

There was silence at the end of the line. It lasted so long that D’Oliveira assumed that they had been cut off. Eventually he asked: “Are you there?” There was still silence. At length Naomi started talking again, and he knew she had been crying. He said: “I know how it is. You feel the same way as I do.”

Letters and telegrams of congratulation flooded in, many from South Africa. Strangers would stop D’Oliveira in the street and wish him luck, and tell him of their sheer, unabashed joy that he had been selected for England. There was something about Basil D’Oliveira, and the obstacles he had overcome, that touched them beyond words.

THE D’OLIVEIRA story is not really about cricket at all. It is about sheer guts and bloody-minded resilience. It is a parable for anybody who is downhearted or at the bottom of the heap and can’t see the way out. It teaches that you must never stop trying, and trying and trying again. And then trying a bit more. It shows that however desperate things are, there is still hope. It shows that however grotesque the injustice, there is the chance of fairness.