I would like to take the opportunity to discuss the issue which defined world cricket in the 1980s – the rebel tours of South Africa. My views will be controversial, but are not intended to cause offence.

Western public opinion tolerated racial discrimination and segregation in the USA, South Africa and parts of Australia well into the 1960s. The recent death of English PM Margaret Thatcher illustrates this: she sincerely believed that the whites had built South Africa and that black people had a different role in society, a lower role.

South Africa was thrown out of world cricket in 1970 when they ruled the world on the pitch. They had the world’s best two batsmen (Barry Richards and Graeme Pollock) and the world’s best fast-bowling all-rounder in Mike Procter. Throughout the 1970s they were excluded from world cricket, and with their government moving ever further towards right-wing racial extremism it was obvious that a long period of exclusion lay ahead....

Discuss!