Board monitors Zimbabwe situation

Cricket Australia has said that it is monitoring the deteriorating situation affecting cricket in Zimbabwe extremely closely, but added that May's tour was not in doubt.

Up to a dozen of Zimbabwe's leading players are reported to have been sacked by the Zimbabwe Cricket Union after talks with the board over the recent dismissal of Heath Streak ended in deadlock on Friday. The players gave the board until next Wednesday to come up with a solution, but on Saturday it emerged that Ozias Bvute - the ZCU board member in charge of racial quotas - sent them all messages saying that that he had dismissed them for not turning up to play in the weekend's domestic matches.

Even Zimbabwe's best side would be fodder for the Australians at the moment, so great has been their decline in the last year, but without most of the current side, the games would almost certainly be close to being farces.

But Cricket Australia maintained its line that the tour would proceed. "It's not for another six weeks or so," said Peter Young, its general manager of public affairs. "We are, as we always do with overseas tours, monitoring the domestic situation in relation to safety and security and we're clearly also interested in what's going on with the team itself."