The MCC scores a duck
Sir: As one of those moo members who have reacted strongly in support of the effort being made to get our club to do something about the preposterous omission of d'Oliveira (in fact the small get-together in which it wr.s decided to press for an extraordinary general meeting under the rules of the club, took place under David Sheppard's chairmanship in my office), I was more than pleased to read Christopher Hollis's forthright refusal (6 September) to accept the yarn that the player was omitted on purely cricketing grounds.
The reasons have been rehearsed too often for me to need to repeat tilrmi to readers of the SPECTATOR but ther ls ow; little nugget which has been unearthed for me by a Lan- cashire cricket statistician which I have not seen referred to anywhere and is perhaps con- clusive. Never since the war has there been an instance of a player making a century in the final Test and not being offered a place on the subsequent tour (and none of the centurions took a vital wicket either). How odd that the exception should be a Cape Coloured man and the tour in South Africa.
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