One of South Africa’s most senior judges will today hear the England and Wales Cricket Board’s appeal to get England’s controversial match with Zimbabwe switched to South Africa and avoid a damaging boycott on the eve of the World Cup.
The appeal to Albie Sachs (68) a member of South Africa’s constitutional court and a veteran anti-apartheid campaigner, was lodged immediately after the World Cup technical committee dismissed the ECB’s request to move the game after a four-hour hearing.
In a damning verdict the International Cricket Council chief executive Malcolm Speed said the ECB’s case was ”unclear and uncertain in its reliability” and said he was happy to have the technical committee’s judgment tested at appeal. ”Much of the information was uncertain in origin and based on hearsay, newspaper and radio reports and it is difficult to make serious decisions on that basis,” he said. ”The technical committee respects the ECB’s responsibility to its own players . . . but the unanimous view of the committee was that its request [to move the game] should be declined.”
The ECB’s chief executive Tim Lamb and a team of lawyers presented a 150-page dossier that centered on: the death in custody of an anti-government demonstrator arrested for protesting before a one-day international last year; warnings from the United States embassy; fears about excessive use of force on demonstrators by security forces; a statement by an anonymous South African player; ”correspondence” received by the ECB; a radio interview with an opposition representative; and the general economic decline in Zimbabwe.
The material, much of which has been in the public domain for some time, did not impress the committee. ”Very little of the material referred to developments in the security situation since the last ICC security reports were received last week,” said Speed. Should Sachs agree with the committee’s view, on the grounds of safety and security, the game can go ahead and Nasser Hussain and his squad will be faced with the choice between travelling to Harare against their better judgment or boycotting the game.
The players will tonight meet representatives of the tournament security directorate, who will attempt to convince them they will be safe in Harare. Delicate negotiations with the ECB are bound to follow.
Ali Bacher, the tournament’s executive director, said he hoped the controversy over the match would dissipate once the tournament gets under way tomorrow. ”It is time for the politicians and administrators to get out of the way and let our great cricketers take the stage. It is going to be a great World Cup for South Africa and for world cricket.”
The committee’s rejection of the ECB’s application came as no surprise. The ICC has implacably stuck to its line that only a significant deterioration in safety and security in Zimbabwe would give grounds for the game to be shifted. Twice in the last fortnight the ICC’s full executive board has ruled that the game can go ahead safely. The submissions to last night’s meeting, attended by almost as many lawyers as cricket administrators, did not appear designed to alter that view with three witnesses, called by the ICC, who have already declared Zimbabwe safe for cricket.
In addition to Bacher, Speed and Sunil Gavaskar, Brian Basson, head of Cricket, United Cricket Board of South Africa, and Campbell Jamieson, ICC commercial manager, were present. Michael Holding, the sixth member, was en route to South Africa and was unable to make it.
The committee were assisted by a barrister Jeremy Gauntlett, South Africa’s leading advocate who has already played a part in the last cricket drama to be played out here, the King Commission hearing into the Hansie Cronje match-fixing scandal in 2000.. Attempting to win over the committee, Lamb made a 90-minute speech detailing the case for rescheduling the match to South Africa.
He was accompanied by a solicitor Mark Gay and the ECB’s counsel, Mark Roper Drimie. At the heart of the submission was a 16-page document outlining the potential danger posed to spectators, media and protestors should the match go ahead.
The ECB is convinced that the match will be a focus for anti-Mugabe demonstrations, and that they are likely to be dealt with harshly be security forces. It has been suggested that opposition groups have bought significant numbers of tickets and will use them to attempt to disrupt matches.
The ECB told the committee that with more than 400 police officers on duty at the six matches scheduled for Harare and Bulawayo violence is almost inevitable.
The Zimbabwe Cricket Union president Peter Chingoka then spent more than an hour arguing that the guarantees already given by the authorities in Zimbabwe still applied despite the deteriorating situation. Three security experts were then called. – Guardian Unlimited