Much more than a game

It was comforting in the late 1960s to learn that the composed, sturdily elegant figure of Basil D’Oliveira was in the England cricket team. He was a man, we felt, who would see us through.

This absorbing book, significant beyond the confines of cricket, is an account of the suffering and frustrations that beset his early career, the astonishing web of intrigue, bribery and political pressure in which he later found himself, and his eventual triumph.