Change of heart

England board calls for Zimbabwe security review

Nasser Hussain: "The Zimbabwe issue is a very delicate one." Tom Shaw/Getty Images

PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa (AP) -- England's cricket board changed course Tuesday and asked World Cup organizers to consider moving its game out of Zimbabwe for security reasons.

Having staunchly supported the International Cricket Council's stand to keep the Feb. 13 match in Harare, the England and Wales Cricket Board made a formal request to the ICC's technical committee to review the "safety and security situation" in Zimbabwe.

Confirmation of the request, which stopped short of actually asking for the game to be relocated, came from ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed.

Speed said it was the first time a country has sought to review the ICC executive board's decision to stage the match in Zimbabwe.

Australia could follow suit, with officials of the Australian Board and its players representatives meeting later in the day.

"Prior to this request from the ECB, no country has sought a review of the ICC decision to stage games in Zimbabwe," Speed said.

Speed said the ECB request is provisionally scheduled to be heard by the ICC Cricket World Cup technical committee in Cape Town on Thursday, 6 February. The hearing will take place in private with the decision of the committee being made public following the hearing.

With the game scheduled for Feb. 13, the ICC has until Sunday -- the opening day of the championship -- to decide whether to move it.

Team captain Nasser Hussain and his players had called on the ICC to move the game fearing that demonstrations by opponents to President Robert Mugabe would disrupt the match in Harare and lead to violence.

The ECB made no request to switch the games when the ICC executive board twice met last month and cricket's world governing body, convinced that the six games in Zimbabwe were safe, made no changes to the schedule.

With time running out, the ECB's management board had to decide on Monday whether to appeal to the ICC's technical committee to move the game on safety grounds.

Six of the 54 World Cup games are being staged in Zimbabwe and, when the English players were in Australia for the recent Ashes series, anti-Mugabe protesters slipped letters under the doors of their hotel rooms threatening that they would disrupt their game.

Meanwhile, Hussain and his team were playing their first warmup game against Eastern Province in the township of Motherwell, just outside Port Elizabeth.

The England captain said he was happy to concentrate on cricket again.

"The Zimbabwe issue is a very delicate one. I think we (players) should try and stay out of it and the leave the administrators to try and sort it out," he said.

"Our representative, Richard Bevan, is constantly talking to the (ECB) board and the ICC. There's a lot going on every day.

"We want to get on with the cricket. The World Cup is a major tournament. Everything will unravel in the days to come."

Bevan, managing director of the Professional Cricketers' Association, believes that the Australian Cricket Board may come under pressure to change its mind and ask for the defending champion's Feb. 24 game in Bulawayo to be moved to South Africa.

He noted that Australia's ambassador to Zimbabwe, Jonathan Brown, had warned Aussie fans to keep away from any demonstrations or political gatherings. The Australian government, like the British one, has called on its players to boycott the game citing human rights atrocities by Mugabe's regime.

According to reports, worried players are due to confront ACB chief executive James Sutherland and general manager Michael Brown and, together with their own representative, Tim May, were due to meet ambassador Brown at Potchefstroom, 140 kilometers (87 miles) southwest of Johannesburg later Tuesday.

"The real concern is not just with the safety of the players but the way the police would deal with the demonstrations," Bevan said. "I understand the Australian High Commission have received evidence of significant build-up in potential demonstrations during their game in Bulawayo.

"I believe the High Commission was trying to receive some sort of guarantee from the authorities that they would not be using excessive force. I don't believe they could find that sort of guarantee," Bevan said.

"I think that has possibly led to a significant change to the advice to the Australian Cricket Board."

Meanwhile, New Zealand Cricket chief executive Martin Snedden flew to South Africa on Tuesday hoping to persuade the ICC to changes its mind and move the Black Caps game against Kenya in Nairobi to South Africa on safety grounds.

The ICC confirmed last week that the Feb. 21 game would go ahead despite calls by the New Zealand players and their federation to move it after a terrorist explosion in Mombasa last November killed 15 people, three of them tourists.

Snedden responded that the players would forfeit the game, which would mean the loss of four points. But the NZC says it may turn to legal action to try and get the match moved.

 

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