Cricket Zimbabwe has urged international cricket-playing nations to separate politics from sport, as pressure mounts to isolate Zimbabwe from international competition.
This follows last week’s call by Archbishop Desmond Tutu for Cricket South Africa (CSA) and the English team to exclude Zimbabwe from their tours as a way of demonstrating concerns about human rights abuses by President Robert Mugabe’s government.
Zimbabwe participated in the South African MTN and Standard Bank competitions in the 2007/08 domestic season. They are expected to take part in the SuperSport series in the coming season.
Lovemore Banda, the spokesperson for Cricket Zimbabwe, told the Mail & Guardian that Zimbabwe are committed to future tours around the world. He said: ”Why should we be isolated? We don’t understand why people would want to mix what is happening in our country politically with sport.
”We will continue to tour around the world to nations whom we are used to playing against. We will always fulfil our fixture [obligations] as per mandate of the ICC.
”When we are isolated we can talk more about it; for now we are focusing on playing more cricket. We are going to visit countries that come to visit us.”
CSA held a meeting on Wednesday where the Zimbabwean issue was meant to be discussed.
Norman Arendse, president of CSA, said: ”The Zimbabwean issue was on our agenda but there was no time to discuss it.
”For now CSA will continue to support Zimbabwean cricketers until a decision whether to isolate them or not is taken at the next board meeting. We will see if we can’t get to the issue at our next meeting. For now we still stand by the ICC policy that we should support the Zimbabwean cricketers,” Arendse said.