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.
South Africa women's national cricket team cut their ties with the country, exclusion from the 1964 and 1968 Olympics were followed by expulsion from the Olympic Movement in 1970. Later in the same year South African athletes were suspended from international competition by the International Amateur Athletics Federation. The invitation for the South African men's tour of England was initially maintained, but threats of physical disruption to matches from anti-apartheid militants saw the British government step-in to cancel the tour. In May 1970, the Cricket Council made the decision that there should be no further tours to and from South Africa until cricket within the country