[2] Virtually every game played during the tour featured demonstrations, with several riots taking place, and the police using both tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse protesters, while on one occasion the English players were pelted with stones.

The itinerary for the one-day series was:[7] The 1990 rebel tour was considered to be an unmitigated disaster, as the English players were seen to be shoring up the dying apartheid regime at the same time as freedoms were being implemented in South Africa.

The day after the end of the test match, Nelson Mandela was freed from imprisonment,[8] while the explosion outside Newlands convinced the organisers that continuing with the tour as planned was not viable, not least as it would potentially put the players safety at risk.

The sports writer Frank Keating, writing in The Guardian, stated "No more inglorious, downright disgraced and discredited team or sportsmen wearing the badge of 'England' can ever have returned through customs with such nothingness to declare".

[2] Each member of the squad received a three-year ban from international cricket for taking part; as with the 1982 tour, this led to the ending of international careers for a number of players, although both captain Mike Gatting and all-rounder John Emburey returned to the England side after their bans expired, with Gatting falling victim to the Ball of the Century from Shane Warne in the first game of the 1993 Ashes series.

At a meeting of the ICC in London in July 1991, the UCBSA made its case for readmission, a cause in which it received the powerful backing of Jagmohan Dalmiya, the Secretary of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.