The Level Playing Field

On the 13th October 1973 at least a dozen security branch policemen in plain clothes descended on twenty-two cricketers playing a match at the Forsyth Cricket Ground in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. Authors Chris Nicholson and Mike Hickson have catalogued in humorous vein the team’s battle with the Security Branch and the dramatic meeting with Sport Minister Piet Koornhof, who stigmatised the cricketers as ‘sporting terrorists’. The authors also contribute an incisive analysis of SACOS and non-racial sport in general, the role of Aurora in early township cricket development, and its devastatingly effective stand against the rebel tour of Mike Gatting.