Cricket is going through a rough patch at the moment, the current situation with spot betting is indeed a terrible situation but compared to past events the threat of life bans seems without precedent especially due to the fact that match fixers Saleem Malik and Ata-ur-Rehman both had there life bans over turned in 2008 and 2006 respectivly. Cricket has gone throught many different controversies including bodyline bowling, ball tampering, throwing, match fixing, spot fixing and even underarm bowling. But the controversy I would like to talk about today is the 1982 England South Afican Rebel Tour and the English cricketers that played for South African cricket clubs .
On this day in 1988 English cricket captain Graham Gooch and seven other members of his squad had been refused visas to travel to India. The banned players, all of whom have played in South Africa, were due to take part in a tour to the subcontinent that winter. Graham Gooch's appointment as captain of the England team by the Test and County Cricket Board was considered controversial because of his rebel tour to South Africa in 1982. Kim Barnett, Alan Lamb and Philip Newport were placed on a UN blacklist for playing in the republic the previous winter. The other four players - John Emburey, Robert Bailey, Graham Dilley and Robert Robinson - were already on the list for previous playing in previous seasons.
The TCCB confirmed on 8 October that the Indian tour was cancelled, and an alternative to New Zealand was arranged. But the New Zealand cricket authorities - worried about sabotage by political activists - called it off. English cricketers often "moonlighted" for South African cricket clubs during the winter, but a ruling by the International Cricket Committee in January 1989 banned any players that continued to do so.
In March 1982, the first major tour since the 1971 international sports boycott was by an English team led by Graham Gooch 12 cricketers, 11 of them with Test caps, had agreed in secret to make a one-month tour of the republic. The players expected a brief public outcry and ICC slap on the wrist. Instead they were the subject of global outrage among press and politicians. The reaction in the republic was the complete opposite the government and white newspapers hailed the return of official international cricket. Apart from Ian Botham, it was said, this was the full-strength England team. The rebels, who numbered 15 after hiring three further players to cover injuries, all received three-year bans from international cricket. These suspensions ended the careers of more than half the squad including Geoffrey Boycott, the world’s leading Test run-scorer.
This is a point of spoting history when politics had interferred with sport and I am not saying that South Africa shouldn't have been banned in all international sports but this cleary shows that a sports governing body should not be leaned on by governments. The greatest ruling aver made by FIFA was that governments cannot run or interfer with their FA's, this is something cricket must do now, the Pakistani and Indian Cricket Boards must become independant of politics before the game can move forward.
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