England’s tour to Zimbabwe was on the brink of cancellation on Wednesday night after David Morgan, the chairperson of the England and Wales Cricket Board, instructed Michael Vaughan’s team not to board a flight to Harare an hour before it was scheduled to leave Johannesburg.
The decision in effect ends England’s prospects of playing cricket in Zimbabwe while Robert Mugabe remains president, and comes as a direct result of the England players’ opposition to the tour. It is also an indication that the International Cricket Council is at last losing patience with the authorities in Harare.
Anxiety about the tour, which was due to begin on Thursday, has been rising among the players since Tuesday evening, when the Zimbabwe government announced that 13 of the 36 British journalists who had applied to cover the tour had been refused accreditation on political grounds.
Vaughan’s squad only agreed to fulfil the five scheduled one-day fixtures in Harare and Bulawayo after Morgan convinced them that the penalties for withdrawal could bankrupt the English game.
The ban on nine media organisations, including the BBC, served both to increase the anxiety among squad members and give them the excuse they needed to push for cancellation.
As was the case 21 months ago when England withdrew from a World Cup fixture in Harare at 24 hours’ notice, cricket’s administrators have been unable to persuade English players that Mugabe’s Zimbabwe is an appropriate place to play the game.
The official position on Wednesday night was that the tour will proceed, and as baggage handlers rushed to remove the squad’s luggage from the plane — all 78 pieces — the players were booked into a hotel near the airport, where they will await a final decision on the tour.
Morgan remained in Harare to continue his attempts to have the media ban overturned, but given the intransigence of the regime on the one hand and the players on the other, the reality is that his chances of resurrecting the tour are slim to non-existent.
The ECB is seeking clarification from the ICC as to whether, under the terms of the Future Tours Programme that underpins the international calendar, the decision to bar journalists constitutes grounds for cancellation. The indications on Wednesday night were that while the media bar may not be sufficient, the ECB is unlikely to be harshly penalised.
The Zimbabwe government on Wednesday confirmed that the barred media organisations had been chosen because they were considered ”political”, while those that were to be admitted, including The Guardian, were not.
”Bona fide media organisations in the UK have been cleared, those that are political have not,” said George Charamba, secretary for the Zimbabwean information ministry. ”This is a game of cricket, not politics. Those that want to bowl us out of politics will have to do so in the political arena.”
The British government on Wednesday obliged when the Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane summoned the Zimbabwean chargé d’affaires ”to express our deep concern that the government of Zimbabwe has denied access to British journalists covering the tour”.
As the players arrived on Wednesday at the Johannesburg International airport from Namibia, where they had played two warm-up matches, questions about whether they would be flying to Harare were met with a weary shrug of the shoulders.
The long faces of the 14-man squad spoke of the depth of unease, however — opposition that became plain at an hour-long meeting in the first-class lounge with their union representative, Richard Bevan, of the Professional Cricketers’ Association, and coach Duncan Fletcher.
Their opposition was plain, and relief came when Morgan called from Harare to tell them that they should not travel. Bevan stressed that Morgan had made the final decision. It is clear, however, that the chairperson would have been unlikely to win a showdown.
”To be frank we were discussing issues that we have been discussing for days when a call came in from David Morgan, so obviously David Morgan has had some discussion with various authorities, maybe the International Cricket Council, and David Morgan has made the decision,” Bevan said.
”The player’s feelings are no different than they always have been. A political statement has been made by the Zimbabwe government regarding media accreditation and we have a number of concerns. Our concerns have been in place for 18 months. They are moral, political, contractual. But the ECB are in control of the situation, they’re the employers, and that’s where we are: we’re not getting on the plane.”
Morgan’s decision to instruct the players to stay in South Africa while he continued to lobby in Harare indicates that the ICC’s indulgence of Zimbabwe may be at an end, as he is uncomfortable with taking bold decisions without the tacit approval of his international peers.
In the build-up to this tour Morgan had stressed that the ICC would levy swingeing penalties on England for undermining the game’s international calendar. He effectively staked his reputation on ensuring the tour took place, assuring his ICC colleagues that there would be no repeat of the World Cup shambles.
That fiasco led the ICC to change its regulations despite the opposition of the ECB, making it an offence punishable by suspension from world cricket for a governing body to withdraw from an overseas tour except in specific circumstances.
Only safety and security or a clear government instruction are ”acceptable grounds for non-compliance” without penalty, neither of which, according to the ECB’s lawyers, applied to Zimbabwe.
On Wednesday, however, the ICC president, Eshan Mani, indicated there was sympathy for the ECB’s position. ”I’m very concerned and very disappointed. We are trying very hard to have this decision reversed,” he said. ”There would be a huge amount of sympathy after the way this matter has been handled by the government of Zimbabwe.” – Guardian Unlimited Â