by Arunabha Sengupta

In Spring 1970, the Cricket Council of MCC produced a statement about why the summer’s tour by South Africa should go on. In spite of apartheid policies, in spite of terrible subjugation of the non-whites. In spite of protests and dissenting voices all over the globe.

By the end of April, 1970, Rowland Bowen, the brilliant and eccentric editor of the Cricket Quarterly, came out with a stinging point by point counter of the Cricket Council’s ‘remarkable apologia’.

The statement of the Cricket Council started with “During the last 18 months much has been said and written about the policies of the South African government and about the position of South African cricket in relation to these policies.” Bowen attacked the essay right from the first line: “At once we get the perspective wrong: much has been written for over half a century on the policies of the South African government and for the last ten years on its attitude to sport.”

The entire statement was thereafter torn to shreds by the unapologetic typewriter of Bowen. Some examples of his scathing comments are as follows:

There is no ‘Coloured Board of Control’ [ as mentioned by Cricket Council] The draftsmen at Lord’s do not even understand South African terminology. There is a South African Cricket Board of Control, a non-racial body, to which the ‘white’ body should affiliate …

The Cricket Council reveal their innate attitude. We, they say, “are not going to be intimidated even into doing what is right. We are the rulers, and we intend to persist with hat we have decided.” It is the attitude which, in terms of politics, lost the American colonies, San Domingo, the Afrikaners in 1832, and much later, Southern Ireland, India, Burma, Ghana, Kenya. “we will not bow down to mob rule” Does anyone seriously imagine that it was anything put a minority in each country named which achieved their independence? These people are froth blowers and live in a romantic past which never existed …

The whole point is that the document is the most miserable piece of hypocrisy and special pleading ever to have been issued from Lord’s. (and as usual by no means free from error or ignorance).

In the summer issue of the Cricket Quarterly, Bowen sliced through the Cricket Council arguments that attacked ‘unlawful demonstrations’ by ‘people subscribing to minority opinion’.

“Bear baiting is illegal, cock-fighting is illegal: boxing other than under the Queensberry Rules is illegal: coursing would have been illegal but for the late election. Each of these sports or games was brought to an end by a ‘vocal minority’.”

Bowen did not mince his words.

Rowland Bowen was born on February 27, 1916.

Many of those words ring true, especially today.