Danger is everywhere
A day after Pakistan's newspapers said players considering boycotting the Champions trophy were applying double standards, Richard Boock, writing in the Sunday Star Times , has the same message for New Zealand's cricketers.
Cricinfo
25-Feb-2013
A day after Pakistan's newspapers said players considering boycotting the Champions trophy were applying double standards, Richard Boock, writing in the Sunday Star Times, has the same message for New Zealand's cricketers.
It was apparently fine that New Zealand arrived in England for this year's winter tour at a time when terrorist attacks were deemed by the Home Office to be "highly likely"; just as it was when Australia continued to play in London as the bombs were going off in 2005.
The same paper has an extract from Boock's biography of Daniel Vettori. Check out the New Zealand captain's views on the increasing politics of cricket, and his take on whether New Zealand should have toured Zimbabwe in 2005.
Cricket has brought Zimbabwe to the New Zealand public's attention - it created a window through which we could watch and debate the topic, and make it relevant for us. It gave us a chance to take cameras and reporters, and with that the eyes of the world, into a place that's pretty well cut off in terms of scrutiny.
Is this such a bad thing? Certainly not. Is contact worth abandoning on the very subjective grounds that to do otherwise is to support Mugabe? Again, I doubt it somehow.
In the Herald on Sunday, Dylan Cleaver says the Champions Trophy is unlikely to be anything other than a "complete wash-out".
In the Sunday Times, Rod Liddle ponders how money changes the attitudes of professional sportsmen.
We are indulgent towards our professional sportsmen, expecting them to be wholly selfish and amoral. Urged to consider the morality of taking part in sporting events in Soviet Russia, or Zimbabwe, or China, they whine that these are political matters and that, possessing no capacity for reason, they should be excused the responsibility to consider them. Show them a huge sack of moolah, however, and they have, over the years, demonstrated a remarkable sense of purpose and conviction, which allowed them to play - for example - in apartheid South Africa.