THE Australian Government is to ban it's national cricket team from participating in September’s cricket tour of Zimbabwe. The cricket governing body, Cricket Australia (CA), received confirmation that Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer was intent on stopping the tour. The Government’s intervention will prevent the CA being fined a compensation sum of $2.4million which would be paid to Zimbabwe.
Mr Downer said: "I think if the Australian cricket team goes - and the Australian cricket team is the greatest team in the world - the message that it will, inadvertently, of course, be sending to the Mugabe regime is that it's not isolated. That the world's greatest cricket team is happy to go and participate in a sports festival there in Zimbabwe ... I don't think that is the right message."
The ICC have taken away Zimbabwe's test status, but national teams are still obliged to play them in one day events. If it is unacceptable to play a test match against a country being governed by a corrupt regime, why are national teams expected to play against them in one-dayers? This beggars belief, the ICC need to sort this out and not leave it to individual governments to ban their national teams from playing.
I think we can be sure that if any compensation was to be paid to Zimbabwe, the oppressed people of that country would not see a penny of it.
