Cricket row in S.A.

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34103, 16 March 1976, Page 30

Cricket row in S.A.

(N Z Preas Alin—CitpyriuM)

JOHANNESBURG.

The decision to play multi-racial teams against Greg Chappell’s international Wanderers throughout the monthlong tour of South Africa has met with hostile reaction from fringe elements in black and white cricket circles.

Oddly, the strongest opponents of South Africa’s new multi-racial steering committee are groups within the non-white cricket movement. A breakaway faction, led by the former South African Cricket Board of Control (Sacboc) members Hassan Howa and Abdul Bhamiee. announced yesterday that it

would seek to suspend Coloured cricketers from the district associations of the Transvaal Cricket Association and the Cape District Union if they played against the Wanderers. Sacboc controls most Coloured cricket in South Africa, and its president, Mr Raschid Varachia, has been a major force in the steering committee formed on January' 18 The Transvaal Cricket Association and the Cape District Union are leagues for Coloured cricketers. Mr Howa and Mr Bhamjee were voted out of Sacboc last year. They have been consistent supporters of the line that multi-racial cricket should not be played against international touring sides until it had been firmly estab-

lished at club and representative levels.

The Johannesburg "Sunday Times” quoted a source within their movement as saying: “We are not interested in window dressing. This is a sop to the outside world.” Meanwhile, the Natal Cricket Board president, Mr Abdullah Khan, has announced that Natal’s Sacboc players would be barred from playing against the Wanderers. Mr Khan said the conditions of the tour—in which all matches should be against multi-racial teams—had been broken when the Wanderers played an all-African side in the first match on Friday. It is believed Mr Khan -is upset because no Indian 'nlayers were included. In contrast, the “Sunday Times” quoted a source, ipparently from within the all-white South African Cricket Association, who said he spoke for a number of white officials. He said many fair-minded whites were tired of bending over backwards to assist Sacboc in approaching total multi-racial cricket in South Africa.

“Let’s get the blacks off our backs—and to hang with what the outside world thinks,” the source was quoted as saying.