Board begins to feel the heat

It seems that it's not only Zimbabwe's sacked cricketers who have trouble in getting through to the Zimbabwe Cricket Union.

After weeks of fence-sitting of admirable resolve - punctuated only by Ehsan Mani's attack on the rebel players - the International Cricket Council was finally stirred into something resembling action by the ZCU's decision to spurn the offer of mediation and sack all 15 players with whom it was in dispute. But its attempts to find out what was going on yesterday were thwarted by Zimbabwe's crumbling infrastructure - nobody from the ICC could get a telephone line into Harare.

The feeling that the ZCU had scored a spectacular own goal was underlined when FICA, the international players' union, announced that it would meet today in Dubai to discuss what action its members can take to try to help resolve the situation.

Back in Zimbabwe, the dismissed players were still in a state of shock at the announcement, but several said that they would be suing the board for unfair dismissal. The ZCU maintains that the players were in breach of contract, but the key could be that they had actually returned to training and made themselves available for selection before the board's deadline expired. While the judiciary is increasingly being packed with Zanu-PF sympathisers, it still has an admirable record of ruling against the government, so the ZCU cannot be assured of an easy ride in court.

"The guys are busy quantifying their claims, and we will bring claims against the ZCU for destroying their livelihood," Chris Venturas, the players' lawyer, told Reuters. "The players are legally entitled to two years' income, and they are working out how much they are owed."

Meanwhile the board continued to preoccupy itself with the mundane, desperately trying to get all the sponsored cars back from the players. Given Zimbabwe's acute petrol shortage, that could be harder than it sounds.