International cricket in South Africa from 1971 to 1981 settlers. Cricket was no different. In 1891/2 Walter Read's Englishmen first played against a non-white team, the Malays. No non-white South Africans played any other international cricket until 1956, when a team of Kenyan Asians toured against South African non-whites. However, with apartheid laws becoming ever stricter, no non-white was selected for the national Test team. This did not, however, stop white-majority Commonwealth nations from playing white South Africa at cricket. In the 1970s and 1980s, the South African Cricket Board ran a competition called the Howa Bowl, which was contested between non-whites. The Basil D'Oliveira affair changed all that.
D'Oliveira affair middle of the street. The South Africa cricket team was due to tour England shortly afterwards, and the MCC remained keen for the series to go ahead. They cancelled the tour a week before the South Africans were due to arrive, following public protests and pressure from the UK government. Virulent anti-apartheid demonstrations in Australia during the South Africa rugby team's 1971 tour led to soaring police costs, matches played behind fences and barbed wire, and a state of emergency in Queensland, all of which prompted the Australian Cricket Board to cancel the tour by the South Africa cricket team