be made. Douglas-Home passed this information to the MCC and advised them not to push for an answer. They had earlier written to the South African Cricket Association to establish whether they had a free hand in choosing a team, but their change of strategy meant that when the official reply arrived Allen refused to take receipt of it. In his biography of D'Oliveira, Peter Oborne writes that Allen and the MCC secretary Billy Griffith wished to hide any South African reply from the full MCC Committee to avoid raising awkward questions over Vorster's intentions. In March 1968, Lord Cobham, an MCC member who wanted the tour to go ahead, met Vorster, who told him that D'Oliveira would not be an acceptable selection to the South African government. Cobham communicated this information to an MCC Committee member, whose identity has never been made public, by private letter. Other than the recipient, only Allen, Griffith and the then-President Arthur Gilligan were aware of the letter, but they chose to keep its contents from the rest of the committee. Allen's justification was that Douglas-Home, a statesman and former Prime Minister, had given advice which contradicted this; also, other Committee members were Test selectors and Allen believed that the information would place non-cricketing pressures on their choices for the England team. Oborne suggests that Douglas-Home's advice was made redundant by Cobham's letter, and that Allen's supposed desire to protect the other selectors was "preposterous" as the tour would have been cancelled. When the English selectors met to choose the team, Allen, Griffith and Gilligan were present to represent the MCC; they had no official say in the selection, but Oborne suggests that Allen made it clear that he considered D'Oliveira unworthy of a place on the team on cricketing grounds. D'Oliveira was eventually left out, to considerable anger and controversy. When he was later added to the team following an injury to another player, Vorster said that the MCC would not be welcome and the tour was cancelled. Some of the events leading up to D'Oliveira's exclusion became public knowledge the following year; the MCC came under heavy public pressure, and the press called for Allen to resign. Oborne suggests that Allen, although not a supporter of apartheid, wished to maintain the traditional links between England and South Africa; he regarded opponents of apartheid as enemies of the MCC and the Establishment. In