South Africa's Cricketing Isolation Grows — 1969 and the Coming Ban

South Africa had been in an uneasy international position since the early 1960s, when they left the Commonwealth. Their cricket board's refusal to countenance mixed-race cricket — or to select non-white players — was tolerated by the ICC until the D'Oliveira case made the issue impossible to ignore.

The D'Oliveira Affair of 1968 — South Africa's refusal to accept Basil D'Oliveira as part of the England touring party because he was of Cape Malay origin — had made South Africa's apartheid policy an unavoidable cricket issue. The ICC voted in 1969 to cancel England's 1968-69 tour of South Africa. African ICC members pressed for South Africa's complete suspension. The 1970 England summer, originally planned to host a South African tour, was replaced by a five-match Rest of the World series — a compromise that satisfied nobody fully. Meanwhile, the Stop the Seventy Tour campaign in England, led by Peter Hain, threatened disruption of any South African sports tour. South Africa played their last Test cricket — against Australia, at Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg — in March 1970. They were then effectively excluded from Test cricket for 22 years, not returning until November 1991 against India in Kolkata.