The tragic aftermath of the Windies tour of apartheid South Africa

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They arrived a band of misfits, sporting gunslingers who had chosen cricket over country and money over morals, and they were to all pay a high price for it – but the truth of the West Indies' rebel tours of South Africa in the apartheid era has never been black and white.

Theirs is a story not just of racism and ethics, but of the gap between rich and poor, of hypocrisy, of ambition, of ego, of macho anti-authoritarianism and of the shifting attitudes in sport and politics at the time that would significantly reshape the world we live in now.

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Once a remarkable cricketer, the late Richard Austin ended up begging on the streets of Kingston, Jamaica. Ashley Gray

The full, layered history of the 20 rebels, who returned home pariahs from those tours, banned from cricket for life (even at a club level), has for the first time been thoroughly detailed in a book by Australian sports writer Ashley Gray.

Shootings, drugs, mental illness and homelessness – The Unforgiven: Mercenaries or Missionaries? burrows deep into the boyhoods, careers and decline of these men who once had the world at their feet, but came down on the wrong side of history.

For some, the fall from grace was absolute, but even for those who rebuilt their lives the bitter aftertaste of the rebel tours of South Africa lingers on.

Gray, who made numerous fact-finding trips to the Caribbean and North America, as well as conducting interviews in South Africa, England and Australia, had the topic on his mind since first stumbling across one of the down-and-out rebels on the streets of Cross Roads in Kingston 17 years ago.

“It began with a conversation with a cabbie in 2003,” says Gray from splendid self-isolation at his home in Tempe, in Sydney’s inner west.

“It was during Australia’s four-test series against the Windies and I was doing stuff for Inside Cricket and on my way to a one-dayer at Sabina Park, when the driver told me Richard Austin was now begging on the streets, doing drugs and other things.

“He drove me and a mate to Cross Roads, the commercial district of the city, where we found Austin running with a gang.”