In the latest instalment of our Rebel Tours series, we talk to the leading South African players of isolation. Following last week's discussion of the legendary 1970s Springboks, we talk exclusively to the generation that succeeded them - or at least always wanted to.

As we saw last week, the 1970 Springboks were among the very best teams the world has known.

They were also among the most frustrated but could take two consolations: first, there were bigger issues at play. The South African team had to be picked on merit and a ban until that was achieved was fully deserved; secondly, the 'Conquerors' at least had their chance, albeit too brief.

As Barry Richards told us: 'Isolation was a big disillusionment because your opportunity to prove yourself on the international stage was taken away. But I managed to get in four Tests - there were a lot of guys behind me who didn't manage to play any.'

For the next generation, neither consolation stood firm. From the mid-1970s onwards the South Africa team was officially picked on merit. And if many non-white players would've refused the opportunity, cricket still remained far ahead of the rest of society. Most leading players felt the game had done all it could and that isolation was nothing more than political interference.

Nor could they take the consolation of even a few international caps. By 1981, a decade after isolation began, only three men with Springbok colours remained at the forefront of the game: Richards, Mike Procter and Graeme Pollock. The uncapped remainder were known as "God's forgotten cricketers".

Yet the strength of South African cricket was still inescapable. Richards and Procter had become legends in England, excelling in the county championship for Hampshire and Gloucestershire respectively. In 1977-79 the pair had also enjoyed the unexpected bonus of World Series Cricket - an arena where Garth Le Roux, Clive Rice and 30-Test veteran Eddie Barlow had all excelled, as they did for Sussex, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

Never was this strength shown more vividly than in the case of Vintcent van der Bijl. A school teacher who played as a Currie Cup amateur through the 1970s, he was virtually unknown upon joining Middlesex for a one-summer swansong in 1980. Aged 32, and with no experience outside South Africa, he took 85 wickets at under 15 apiece in a title-winning side. Suddenly his record-breaking domestic record merited consideration.

Asked about the outstanding players eclipsed by isolation, one name stands out for Richards: 'Vince van der Bijl is one outstanding example of somebody who would have been a wonderful international player.'

By 1981 South Africa were surely inferior to the West Indies (although no-one would ever find out for sure) but fancied their chances against any other side. Neither India nor Pakistan could replicate their home form abroad while England and Australia were ravaged by Packer splits.

It was a popular view at the time that the second best team in the world was Barbados (Gordon Greenidge, Desmond Haynes, Collis King, David Murray, Franklyn Stephenson, Malcolm Marshall, Ezra Moseley, Sylvester Clarke, Joel Garner......). But the Currie Cup offered its own provincial challenger: the Transvaal 'Mean Machine', which won seven titles between 1978 and 1988.

'I think Transvaal in 1981-2 could have taken on almost any national team,' says van der Bijl. 'I mean our team was Jimmy Cook, Henry Fotheringham, Alvin Kallicharran, Graeme Pollock, Kevin MacKenzie, Clive Rice, Alan Kourie, Ray Jennings, 'Spook' Hanley, myself and Neil Radford. And then Sylvester Clarke took my place for the next year and probably even strengthened the team.

'If you go back to what could be regarded as South Africa's greatest gift to Test cricket - the 100-run partnership in an hour against Australia in Durban between Pollock and Richards in 1970, that was just an extraordinary hour, and we would have had lots of those.

'And "Prockie" would have got lots of seven-fors, and Ray Jennings would have been an amazing wicketkeeper, and Peter Kirsten... Ah man we had some great players.'

One of the few leading South Africans not to be tempted to Johannesburg by Ali Bacher was Western Province paceman Le Roux, but he has no hesitation in backing up those sentiments: 'South African cricket at that time was of a particularly high standard I thought. There were some names there that could play. And I was lucky enough to play county cricket in England and that Packer series so I'd seen what the best in the world looks like and I'd bowled at it.

'I'd bowled at Viv Richards and Gordon Greenidge and Ian Botham and whoever else, so I had a pretty fair idea of what the best in the world was like and our cricket didn't have to stand back to anybody at that particular time. That Mean Machine and our Western Province team that challenged... and all the Currie Cup teams were highly competitive with some fantastic cricketers.'

After ten years in isolation South African cricket was desperate to test itself: overseas their players laid triumph upon triumph, breaking record after record; at home, any South Africa team would be picked on merit so they saw exclusion as the height of hypocrisy. Many fans, players and administrators knew their would-be Springbok team off by heart: Cook, Richards, Kirsten, Pollock, Rice, Procter......

But the ICC had said that they could never return to Test cricket until apartheid was dismantled. It seemed impossible to all but Bacher. The former Springbok skipper had other ideas. He knew the arguments that "God's forgotten South Africans" were neither white nor cricketers but felt his responsibility was to the game. If the ICC wouldn't allow his men through the front door, he'd have to find a way through the back.

Peter May

The Rebel Tours: Cricket's Crisis of Conscience is out now, published by SportsBooks.

It this week received its first review, hailed as "an engrossing book....difficult to put down....That Peter May should write such an accomplished first book is pretty much on par with scoring a century on your Test debut."

For more articles, interviews and self-congratulatory nonsense visit The Rebel Tours blog.