Empire Cricket Booklet

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JONTYWINCH

connections with the Malay community, pointing out: 'My father was born of Dutch parents in Cape Town and my mother hails from St Helena.' He also objected to the fact that no one had ascertained his views on the subject of a cricket tour and he stated unequivocally that he would not think of going in the capacity of baggage-man. 16 The following day, a letter from a 'Coloured Cricketer' served to explain the' difference between a Malay and a coloured man ... not one coloured man out of six would allow another to call him a Malay to his face'. Important points were being conveyed to everyone involved in the cricket tour. Richard Parry noted Hendricks's ' desire to distance himself from

Milton Assumes Control

Milton returned to the fore as chairman of the WPCU selection committee and was thus responsible for a final decision on the nomination of Hendricks. He discussed the matter with Rhodes who later claimed: 'They wanted me to send a black fellow called Hendricks to England . .. but I would not have it. They would have expected him to throw boomerangs during the luncheon interval.' 18 It came as a subtle reference to the 1868 tour by Aborigine players. Referred to as 'darkies' and viewed as 'curiosities', the Aborigine cricketers were required to provide boomerang and spear-throwing demonstrations in addition to playing cricket. 19 Rhodes thus shifted the

Cecil John Rhodes c1894, the year when he entered the debate over whether 'Krom' Hendricks should be selected for the tour to England

blame for the non-selection of Hendricks from South Africa to Britain. Milton, of course, knew that the rejection of Hen dricks was a great deal more complex. The Cape was shifting its colonial policy from a strategy of amalgamation to one of segregation. The movement culminated in the 'momentous and complicated' Glen Grey Bill which regulated the lives of black dwellers in the Eastern Cape.'Conceived by Rhodes ... drafted

the descendants of Muslim slaves who had arrived in the Batavian era in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and identify himself with the "Christian" white ruling class'. These were concepts of civilisation that offered opportunities for social improvement which appealed to Hendricks, despite concerns that 'the Cape's social and political landscape under the Rhodes government was undergoing a period of rapid and fundamental social and cultural as well as economic change'.17