Wimbledon’s Russian players should be banned – it’s our moral duty

In March 1992, two years after Nelson Mandela’s release from prison, South Africa held a historically decisive whites-only referendum on whether to proceed with negotiations aimed at the dismantling of apartheid. The “yes” vote won by a thumping 68 per cent.

Had South Africa’s cricketers not spent the previous two months down under thumping Australia – or, at any rate, giving as good as they got – the margin of victory in the referendum would have been finer – maybe the “no” vote would have won. That tour of Australia, blessed by Mandela, ended an international boycott of South African cricket that had lasted 22 years. Its effect on the country’s white population, a large proportion of whom followed the test matches on live TV, was electric.

It marked the beginning of a journey from darkness into light. The decades-long international boycott on all sports had taught ordinary whites that the benefits of apartheid came at a price. At the expense of the black majority, they enjoyed one of the highest standards of living on the world. But even the most apolitical among them understood that they were shunned and despised as no other people were. It was the refusal of the rest of the planet’s inhabitants to play with them, at anything, that brought home most sharply to every single white South African that they were the lepers of the world.