Atherton adds to pressure on ECB over Zimbabawe

However much the ECB might wish that it would, the subject of next autumn's proposed tour of Zimbabwe just won't go away. The latest person to resurrect the debate is Michael Ancram, the deputy leader of the Conservative Party, who on Thursday tabled a House of Commons motion urging urged Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, to support a ban on England making the trip.

But Ancram was clear that the responsibility for scrapping the tour was the ECB's and not the government's. That leaves the ECB - and particularly Tim Lamb, its chief executive - exposed, as it has always officially maintained that it is not the Board's role to make moral decisions.

And in today's Sunday Telegraph newspaper, former England captain Michael Atherton added to the slowly mounting pressure with a hard-hitiing column in which he stated that it was "inconceivable" that the tour would go ahead.

And Atherton left no-one in any doubt where he felt the blame for the "shambles" which culminated in England's World Cup boycott laid - in a lack of leadership. "Out of this vacuum of leadership a fiasco emerged," wrote Atherton, "one that cost English cricket a substantial amount of money, a place in the second stage of the World Cup, and earned them little public admiration.

"The domestic situation in Zimbabwe continues to deteriorate, but Lamb will look red-faced if he starts to moralise now, and he is not in the habit of embarrassing himself needlessly. But he is an astute politician and will recognise the need to avoid a repeat."

The ECB meets to discuss the issue in February, and it will do so against a backdrop of public opinion increasingly against the tour going ahead, and pressure from leading sponsors not to go as well.

Atherton points out that unlike the World Cup, which was a global event which even Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe's embattled president, realised could not be used for self-publicity, an England tour would present the Zanu-PF regime with a gilt-edged opportunity to get one over on a Britain it despises. "I would," Atherton explained, "say there is scope for disturbing violence."

And Atherton concluded that whatever happens, the ECB cannot leave their captain brutally exposed as it did with Nasser Hussain in the build-up to the World Cup. "Vaughan has enough problems trying to find an attack who can take 20 Test wickets," he concluded. "It would be a disgrace if he found himself in a similar position."