Salisbury Sports Club tournament in 1970
Tournament and related controversy in Rhodesia / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Garfield Sobers, captain of the West Indies cricket team and one of the most prominent cricketers in the world, outraged many in the Caribbean in September 1970 when he took part in a friendly double-wicket tournament at Salisbury Sports Club in Rhodesia (renamed Zimbabwe in 1980), a country in southern Africa that was unrecognised internationally because of its mostly white minority government. The resulting furore nearly caused him to lose the captaincy, and threatened the unity of the West Indies team itself.
Sobers was captain of the "Rest of the World" team that toured England between May and August 1970 in place of the South Africa national team, whose proposed tour had been cancelled by English cricketing authorities because of apartheid. He accepted an invitation to the Rhodesian competition from Eddie Barlow, a South African member of the Rest of the World team, and arrived in Salisbury on the day of the event. To ecstatic applause from the mostly white spectators, Sobers partnered South African Test captain Ali Bacher in the tournament, and said afterwards that he had enjoyed himself, though he and Bacher had not won. Having established a personal rapport with the Rhodesian Prime Minister, Ian Smith, Sobers left the next day and returned home to Barbados.
Many in the West Indies were appalled by Sobers' actions, and when he subsequently made positive comments about Smith, Rhodesia and white South African cricketers in press interviews and announced his intention to play more cricket in Rhodesia, the vitriol intensified, with one Antiguan newspaper branding him a "white black man".[1] A number of prominent figures, including entire political parties, called for Sobers to be stripped of the West Indies cricket captaincy. Guyanese Prime Minister Forbes Burnham barred Sobers from Guyana, and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi of India announced that if Sobers remained in the team, India would pull out of its upcoming tour of the West Indies. Sobers argued that as a "professional cricketer and a sportsman, not a politician",[2] he had done nothing wrong.
The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) contemplated whether it would be better to cancel all matches in Guyana or to sack Sobers; neither prospect was attractive. The crisis ended when Eric Williams, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, wrote a letter of apology for Sobers to sign, which was relayed to the WICB and several governmental bodies in late October 1970. This was accepted, and the incident was soon largely forgotten. Sobers regained his overwhelming popularity with West Indian cricket fans, continued as team captain until 1972 and retired from cricket two years later. He thereafter retained his stance that politics should not interfere with sport. His Rhodesian visit has been cited as precursoring the South African rebel tours controversy of the 1980s.