Muted Zimbabwe Tip-toe Into Town

The cricketing representatives of a murderous regime arrived in England yesterday morning for a tour that should never be taking place. However, the fact that they are here may well serve further to highlight the human-rights violations inflicted on the people of Zimbabwe by the patron of its cricket board, Robert Mugabe.

Hours after their arrival at Gatwick airport the chairman of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union, Peter Chingoka, a longstanding and respected administrator who despite the stated apolitical nature of his organisation must be under immense pressure from his government, attempted to distance his players from controversy.

He cited hypocrisy on the part of those who choose to single out cricketers from other Zimbabwean sports teams and individuals, and those who fail to recognise that many British companies continue to trade in that country. But it carried no conviction. Sport and politics, politics and sport, oil and water. It is the same old mantra.

Controversy there certainly is, and it will not disappear when the cricket starts. Zimbabwe's presence here, and England's bewildering commitment to a reciprocal tour next year, shows both moral redundancy and avarice on the part of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

It is barely a couple of months since, amid much acrimony and to general scorn, they instructed the England side not to fulfil a World Cup fixture in Harare, citing not ethical reasons as a number of players would have liked, but those of safety after receiving a threatening letter from a dissident group calling itself the Sons and Daughters of Zimbabwe.

The ECB does not seem to have acquired a conscience since and reports do not suggest that Zimbabwe has become more secure since the World Cup. Perhaps they are hoping the Sons and Daughters will resurrect themselves with another get-out clause when the time comes.

As there has been no suggestion that the International Cricket Council has placed pressure on the ECB to fulfil these commitments as a means of retaining the integrity of its Test match championship, this has to be about money alone. Failure to play the World Cup match could cost the board several millions of pounds - money that will be cut from budgets right through the system - and although there were contingencies in place, cancellation of this tour would have pared the income yet further.

The ECB has an obligation to all levels of the game here, but does not appear to have given undue thought to any possible alternatives.

"It upsets me when people say we are putting money before morality," protested the ECB chief executive Tim Lamb yesterday. "I think there are double standards here. It is unfair for cricket to have to make political decisions. We don't think the Zimbabwe cricketers are any more the henchmen of Robert Mugabe than the England players are the foot soldiers of Tony Blair. They are representing their country at cricket."

Who said life is fair, though; it certainly is not in Zimbabwe. Cricketers, like most other people, are capable of making political decisions and may even have done so in the local elections yesterday. They can, if they have the moral and physical courage of the former Zimbabwean cricketers Andy Flower and Henry Olonga - whose black-armband protest during their own first World Cup game effectively ended their international careers - even make the boldest of statements, although that is not likely to be repeated in the coming weeks by either side.

Zimbabwe are a weakened side anyway with the departure of Flower in particular and despite Chingoka's assertion to the contrary, rumours persist that the side has been chosen to contain no one who will rock the political boat.

Olonga's appeal yesterday that his fellow countrymen should use the platform of an England tour to speak out as did he and Flower will certainly fall on deaf ears.

"It is not correct that our players have been told not to comment on things," said Chingoka, when asked on the rumours that anyone who speaks out of turn will be expelled from the tour. "But we do encourage the players to concentrate on the cricket."

Instead the protests will come from the periphery. There was strong security but no trouble at Lord's where the team's hierarchy held its first press conference at midday. Outside the ground, where significant police had mustered, protest was restricted to the activist Peter Tatchell, a handful of others and banners reading No Cricket While Mugabe Kills and Latest Score: Zimbawe 3,409 Tortured, 260 Killed.

From small beginnings though, something more significant may grow, starting, if not at Edgbaston tomorrow, where the tourists play a one-day warm-up game against British Universities, then probably at Worcester a week today when they begin their fixtures proper, and in an itinerary that includes the first Test at Lord's starting on May 22. For the captain Heath Streak and his team, life on and off the field may not be so quiet again.