<P> They continued to play regularly series of matches against England, Australia and New Zealand until 1970 . The membership rules of the Imperial Cricket Conference (ICC) meant that when South Africa left the Commonwealth in May 1961, they also left the ICC . Despite the rules being changed in 1964 to allow other nations to be "Associate" members, South Africa did not reapply . Due to South African apartheid laws, which introduced legal racial segregation to the country in 1948, no non-white (defined under the legislation as either "black", "coloured" or "Indian") player was eligible to play Test cricket for South Africa . </P> <P> The anti-apartheid movement led the ICC to impose a moratorium on tours in 1970 . This decision excluded players such as Graeme Pollock, Barry Richards and Mike Procter from partaking in international Test Cricket . It would also cause the emigration of future stars like, Basil D'Oliveira, Allan Lamb and Robin Smith, who both played for England, and Kepler Wessels, who initially played for Australia, before returning to South Africa . World class cricketers of their day like Clive Rice, Vintcent van der Bijl also never played Test Cricket despite their first class records . </P> <P> The ICC reinstated South Africa as a Test nation in 1991, and the team played its first sanctioned international match since 1970 (and its first ever One - Day International) against India in Calcutta on 10 November 1991 . South Africa's first Test match after re-admission was played against the West Indies in April 1992 . The match was played in Bridgetown, Barbados and South Africa lost by 52 runs . </P> <P> Since South Africa have been reinstated they have achieved mixed success, and hosted the International Cricket Council Cricket World Cup in 2003 . However, it is widely believed the sides containing the likes of Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Gary Kirsten and Hansie Cronje grossly underachieved, gaining a reputation as "chokers", due to them reaching the semi-finals of the Cricket World Cup four times, but failing to progress into the finals . In the second part of the 1990s, South Africa had the highest winning percentage in ODIs of any team, but they were knocked out of the 1996 World Cup in the quarter - finals, and then were eliminated on countback after tying their semi-final against Australia in 1999 . In 2003, South Africa were one of the favourites but were eliminated by one run in the group stages after they had mistakenly counted the number of runs they needed . </P>

When did south africa return to international cricket