South Africa: isolation and return.

From founder member to outsider, 1909 to 1961

The ICC says South Africa became the third Test nation in 1889, and it was one of the three founding members of the Imperial Cricket Conference in 1909, with England and Australia. Membership was tied to the British Empire and then the Commonwealth. The ICC records that South Africa left the Commonwealth in May 1961, so ceased to be eligible, and sent only an observer to that summer's meeting. When countries outside the Commonwealth were admitted as Associates in 1965, South Africa did not apply to rejoin.

Rob Steen, writing for ESPNcricinfo on 26 June 2008, says that after 1961 England and the Australasian boards stood by South Africa against protests from India, Pakistan and the West Indies. The historian Bruce Murray, of the University of the Witwatersrand, records that the South African Non-Racial Olympic Committee (SANROC) was formed in October 1962 to press for South Africa's exclusion from international sport, and that South Africa was left out of the 1964 and 1968 Olympic Games.

The D'Oliveira affair, 1968

Murray's 1999 study records the sequence. Basil D'Oliveira, a South African-born cricketer playing for England whom Murray describes as Coloured, was left out of the MCC party for South Africa chosen on 27 August 1968. He was added on 16 September 1968 after Tom Cartwright withdrew injured. The next day, 17 September, at the National Party congress in Bloemfontein, Prime Minister B.J. Vorster's government refused to accept the team as an MCC side. The MCC then cancelled the tour; secondary sources, including Wikipedia, date the cancellation to 24 September 1968, a day we could not confirm from an MCC page.

Why was he left out at first?

Two positions are on record, and no official finding was found either way:

• The MCC maintained that leaving him out was a cricket decision, made on merit.
• Critics said the selectors had given way to pressure over apartheid, a charge that was always denied.

Steen adds that Vorster had told Lord Cobham months before the selection that there would be no tour if D'Oliveira were picked, and that this became public only the following year. Cricinfo's tour history, by Dave Liverman, records that an MCC special general meeting followed, at which resolutions criticising the selection and calling for no more tours until there was progress towards non-racial cricket were defeated on postal votes. Murray concludes the affair was widely seen as a decisive step towards South Africa's isolation from Test cricket, completed within three years.

Isolation, 1970

Liverman's tour history records that Peter Hain set up the "Stop the Seventy Tour" committee in September 1969 to oppose South Africa's planned 1970 tour of England, and that the Test and County Cricket Board cut the tour programme after county grounds were vandalised in January 1970. The Home Secretary, James Callaghan, formally asked the Cricket Council to cancel the tour about two weeks before it was due, and the Council did so. Secondary sources, including Wikipedia, date the cancellation to 22 May 1970, which we could not confirm from a primary source. A Rest of the World side played England instead.

The ICC says South Africa was suspended indefinitely from international cricket in 1970 because of apartheid. South African History Online says the ICC suspended it after a resolution against the government's apartheid policy. We did not see the resolution itself. The ICC's history records that South Africa's applications to rejoin were rejected in 1978 and again at the 1981 Conference.

The rebel tours

The ICC's history says unofficial "rebel tours" by international players to South Africa took place from the 1970s into the 1980s. South African History Online says that during its suspension South Africa played only rebel teams from England, Australia and New Zealand, and could field only white players. Liverman's tour history records an English rebel side led by Graham Gooch in 1981-82 and another led by Mike Gatting in 1989-90. It also says the English players on the first tour were barred from Test cricket for three years, and that bans across the rebel tours ranged from three years to life; we have not confirmed those bans from the boards' own decisions. In 1989, the ICC records, a special meeting agreed rules that in effect barred from Test cricket any player with sporting links to South Africa.

Which South African body organised them?

The ICC's history page names the "South African Cricket Board". The United Cricket Board's own history, kept in Cricinfo's archive, points instead to the South African Cricket Union (SACU), which ran white and first-class cricket; it was SACU's commissioner, Ali Bacher, who announced the end of rebel tours in April 1990. The South African Cricket Board (SACB) was the non-racial board.

Unity and return, 1990 to 1992

Wisden (1 January 1993) says South Africa arrived in Calcutta four months after rejoining the ICC. On the date of that match, South African History Online and most sources give 10 November 1991, while a Hindustan Times piece of December 2021, seen only as a search summary, gives 12 November.

Wikipedia says Cricket South Africa was formed in 2002 and became the sole governing body after merging with the United Cricket Board in 2008; we have not confirmed that from the board itself. The ICC as it is today is on the ICC, and the national boards on national boards.