Colour Might Stop Thomas’s Tour

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30962, 19 January 1966, Page 18

Colour Might Stop Thomas’s Tour

(N.Z. Prest Association— Copyright) LONDON. There was a deliberate conspiracy of silence about the chance of G. Thomas being dropped from the Australian team to tour South Africa because of the colour of his skin, Frank Rostron of the “Daily Express” reported from Sydney.

“Australian cricket selectors must soon grapple with the problem of Thomas’s dusky skin,” he said. After his play against England and his West Indies tour Thomas should be a certainty for South Africa, said B -f--ron.

“But I learn that when Australia’s Cricket Board of Control meets on February 8 the delicate problem of Thomas’s complexion and his ancestry will be one of the main items on the “There is a deliberate conspiracy of silence among his team-mates and Australian officials, whose exaggerated fear of controversy has only magnified the conflicting rumours about Thomas. “Officials and test players have variously described Thomas as part-Polynesian, part-Indian or part-Aboriginal, “Under any of these definitions he is not acceptable in South Africa, where, for apartheid reasons, they refused to allow a Maori in the New Zealand team which toured there.

“The whole problem is almost unmentionable in Australia,” said Rostron, who quoted Sir Donald Bradman

as saying he was interested only in Thomas's cricketing ability, and Thomas’s mother as saying that her grandfather was half Red Indian.