Dolly mixture

Abstract

"I come down on the side of honesty, a good honest piece of bungling by good honest men." Thus did Ted Dexter, sometime England captain and one-time prospective Tory MP, characterise the most important selection meeting in sporting history. More recently, in the Sunday Telegraph, the political columnist Kevin Myers delivered much the same verdict, except that he described the original omission of Basil D'Oliveira from the MCC party to tour South Africa in the winter of 1968-69 as "cretinous". In 2003 Observer Sport Monthly named it among its "Ten Worst Sporting Decisions". But were they all too generous?