The apartheid tour that turned sour

In the Guardian, Paul Weaver looks back to England's 1990 rebel tour to South Africa, which was the most fractious of them all because of the changing political climate in the country. Mike Gatting's team weren't quite the mercenaries they set out to be and it was a tour that should never have happened.

Bacher, now 67, told me: "That tour nearly finished me off, emotionally. We lived in a cocoon here, you must remember. Including myself. When we had the previous rebel tours there were packed crowds, mainly white people, no demonstrations. I thought the country, the people, had no problem. I must confess that if I had known the anger and the hurt that those tours would cause I would have thought twice about them. It was very hurtful for me. I had been a liberal all my life. And I thought Mike Gatting might get killed in Pietermaritzburg."