by Arunabha Sengupta
Clive Rice is apprehensive. The legendary Transvaal and Nottinghamshire all-rounder has just landed at the Dumdum Airport of Calcutta, in charge of the first-ever South African side on an official tour post-apartheid.
It is November 1991. Nelson Mandela has finally been released from prison, and the Rainbow Nation has turned over a new page. India is their first port of visit after the 21-year isolation.
Rice fears the worst. The city has a history of rioting, especially when cricket is concerned. And some of the riots are connected with politics as well. In 1969, a mob smashed the windows and doors of the hotel where the Australian team was put up, on the spurious suspicion that Doug Walters had served in the Vietnam War.
Will they erupt now that the South Africans are here, emerging from a long history of exploitation and suppression of their non-White people?
India has always had an anti-apartheid policy. In 1974, the tennis side refused to travel to South Africa to compete in the Davis Cup final, awarding the trophy by default. MK Gandhi, before he became the Mahatma, was one of the major activists against discrimination during his two decades in South Africa.
Ranji had been politely asked not to tour in 1895-96 with the tam of Lord Harris. Duleep had been curiously omitted from the 1929-30 tour.
The first South Africans to play cricket in India were not Rice’s men in fact. In 1921-22, a motley group of Natal Indians had arrived in India to play a number of football matches and also a couple of cricketing encounters. Babulal Maharaj and Billy Subban had been really good, versatile in both the sports. After playing a match against Mohun Bagan in Calcutta, they had been roped in by the traditional side to play for them against Balligunj. They, not Cheema Okerie, were the first foreign recruits of the club.
The Natal Indians had even tried to participate in the annual Bombay Quadrangular matches. And in the early 1950s, the South African non-white cricket association had tried to get Anthony de Mello to arrange an Indian team to visit them.
The relation of the two countries have always been curious. The thousands of Indians who migrated as coolies to Natal and became shopkeepers were never given citizenship, till 1961. Treated with suspicion, called The Asiatic Curse, they were not even allowed for more than a day in the Afrikaner stronghold of Orange Free State.
Officially Apartheid was still not over. Universal suffrage had not yet been exercised in South Africa.
Yes, Nelson Mandela was out of prison. But the volatile fires of protest had shortened the last rebel tour of Mike Gatting less than a year earlier.
The Indian passports still bore the legend: ‘Valid for travel to all countries except the Republic of South Africa’.
Would all that backfire?
What the South African skipper witnesses as the team bus hits the road is beyond his wildest dreams. From the airport to the hotel, streets are lined with people who have turned up to welcome the touring team.
Years later, Rice tells the author in an interview: “I don’t think even Obama would get that reception.”
10 Nov 1991.
When Rice steps into the field for the opening match of the series, the atmosphere is unbelievable in the steaming cauldron of Eden Gardens with nearly hundred thousand fans assembled for the historic match. The noise is deafening.
The fans are eager for the cricket, but the sense of occasion has escaped few. Alongside posters predicting “Azhar’s boys will Cook Rice, ” there are others proclaiming “Anti-apartheid shot.”
And they are led to a cracker of a match. Allan Donald makes the world sit up and take notice with one of the fastest spells witnessed in the ground. And India overcome South Africa’s paltry score of 177 by an uncomfortable 3-wicket margin, mainly through the genius of Sachin Tendulkar and the superb debut of Pravin Amre.
The picture of Rice demonstrating his appreciation by joining his hands together remains a touching sporting photograph.