Former South African president Nelson Mandela stepped into the debate over England’s World Cup cricket game in Zimbabwe on Wednesday by saying the game should go ahead in Harare and not be moved to South Africa.
Otherwise, he said, world cricket would degenerate into chaos. The England players want their February 13 game in Harare moved to South Africa, fearing that violence will break out if opponents of President Robert Mugabe’s regime disrupt the game.
The game’s world governing body, the International Cricket Council, says that Zimbabwe is safe enough to handle six World Cup games and has decided not reschedule any.
But the England players have persuaded their own board to have a change of heart and the England and Wales Cricket Board will ask the ICC’s technical committee to review security in Zimbabwe at a meeting in Cape Town on Thursday.
Mandela, who says he will go to South Africa’s games to cheer the host team on, says that the six Zimbabwe-based games shouldn’t be moved.
”They must respect what the international cricket committee says,” Mandela told reporters outside his home. ”We must show discipline. If we refuse to follow what the international body says, we introduce chaos in cricket.
”They have examined the matter they have conducted research and so on. They know what is dangerous for cricketers,” Mandela said. ”If they say cricketers must go to Zimbabwe, must go to Kenya, that is what they must do.”.
With the game scheduled for Thursday of next week, the ICC has until Sunday — the opening day of the championship — to decide whether to move it.
The ECB made no request to switch the games when the ICC executive board twice met last month and no changes were made to the schedule. After hearing the case of Nasser Hussain and his players and stating that the situation in Zimbabwe had become worse in the last few days, however, the ECB changed course.
ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed and World Cup executive director Ali Bacher are on the technical committee along with ICC commercial manager Campbell Jamieson, former South African umpire Brian Basson, Indian batting great Sunil Gavaskar and former West Indies fast bowler Michael Holding.
If the technical committee upholds England’s plea to move the game, the matter then goes to a full meeting of the ICC executive board.
Six of the 54 World Cup games are being staged in Zimbabwe and, when the English players were in Australia for the recent Ashes series, anti-Mugabe protesters slipped letters under the doors of their hotel rooms threatening that they would disrupt their game.
Some Australian players also expressed concerns about their game in Zimbabwe on February 24. After a meeting with their representatives and federation on Tuesday, Australian Cricket Board chief executive James Sutherland said they remained committed to playing in Bulawayo but could reconsider if the security situation got worse. – Sapa-AP
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