The South African cricketing fraternity today mourned the death of pioneering Indian-origin sportsman Mohamed Ismail 'Bree' Bulbulia.
He was 91.
Bulbulia was South Africa's first non-white umpire in the apartheid-era, when sport was forcibly segregated on racial lines, in the first Test against Kenya Asians in 1956.
Popularly known as 'Bree', Bulbulia had also signed up the entire West Indian team for a South African tour in 1958 for the then princely sum of 5,000 pounds, but the tour was cancelled after the African National Congress in exile disapproved of it as the world applied sanctions against the white minority government.
Bulbulia was buried the same evening in accordance with Muslim customs.
