Nixta Sinks

Now it has come to pass in the past and lo! verily I have indeed said unto thee all that nay, I shall not comment politically on the happenings of the world, and shall keep myself entirely off that topic of politics, yea, which I find so painful and irritating to contemplate. But this is cricket we're talking about and some cockhead murdering hoojamaflip, and the retardedness of world cricketing bodies.

"The whole incident is regrettable but it has been resolved"

ECB chairman David Morgan

Is it not incredibly irresponsible of the ICC to threaten to fine a team that refuses to play a match/tour against a team that represents a country run by a deluded murderous tyrannical dictator? Of course the Zimbabwe cricket team doesn't share the aforementioned dictator's beliefs or murderousness, but would you as an England cricketer want to visit Zimbabwe in a high-profile international cricket tour? Keep politics and sport separate you say? Balls to you, I say! If Zimbabwe as a government are going to benefit from the tour (publicity, tourism (which you can bet will be taxed up the wazoo and carefully chaperoned), etc.), and so transparently no less as by insisting that any foreign journalist covering the tour must, having first been banned from travelling there at all, now sign a contract that they will not mention anything but cricket [so as to avoid any negative coverage] (they can't surely want to ban positive coverage), then the rout...er...tour must be cancelled.

I sound like a pro-democracy imperialist hound. I'm not suggesting fair elections. I'm not suggesting sanctions. That's for other slow-moving bureaucratic bodies to discuss and arrange. My point is that sport is an important publicity tool, and to ignore that as a governing body and force those who acknowledge it to compete under duress of moral discomfort is tantamount to rendering the competition pointless, and indeed, in combination with such gags as this week's journalist ban, in some ways to supporting the regime in proferring them publicity. There's no such thing as negative publicity? I'm not convinced. But when you're in charge of the publicity, you'd have to be pretty thick for there to be any.

In the past the ICC, priding itself on remaining blind to the political ramifications of a manipulative national sports council (run, it must be imagined, by Mugabe appointed cronies), has threatened to levy enormous fines on the ECB and team for dropping out of matches the safety of which were in grave doubt, not to mention the fact that many of the players had serious moral reservations about partaking of the competition. The argument that it's good for the people of Zimbabwe and for the betterment of cricket in the country is irrelevant.

I'm not suggesting any of the players are trying to engage in politics, but I *do* feel that ECB and ICC representatives are plainly stupid and, what's more, vastly underqualified to recognise and work with the real issues. I mostly feel those Zimbabweans suffering from Dr. Mugabe's government are being let down by the head-in-the-sand attitudes of the aforementioned governing bodies pretending that sport is not popular enough that it should carefully consider the PR ramifications.

When Zimbabwe banned all foreign journalists for the tour I breathed a sigh of relief as surely the tour must be cancelled and eyebrows must be raised in government. When they dropped the ban and replaced it with the cricket-only clause, I hoped the tour would have disbanded anyway, but dumb-fucks named David Morgan pushed it through and much to the surprise and dismay of many (including Jonathan Agnew, the England team), out they went.

"It is extraordinary," said BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew, one of the journalists who had been banned.

"Every single piece of information we had been receiving said there would be no way the Zimbabweans would change their mind.

"Everyone had got themselves into going home mode. I know for a fact the players were planning to go home for a few days."

I have no problem with Zimbabwe coming to England to play. Just don't shake the cock of a murderous halfwitted bigot.