Rebel England tour in the pipeline

Zimbabwe's outcast white cricketers, with nowhere to play and big legal bills to pay, are considering staging a rebel tour of social matches across the UK.

Discussions have only just begun, but if the tour goes ahead the 15 players currently at odds with the Zimbabwe Cricket Union would play a series of matches against teams such as the wealthy village side Lashings.

"There are quite a few logistics to sort out," the batsman Grant Flower told The Age newspaper. "But it is a possibility because the guys have got some good marketability in England at the moment."

Heath Streak, the exiled former captain, looms as the man most likely to lead the proposed travelling outfit. "I've obviously got to make a living," he said.

"If there's no resolution to this whole thing then I've got to look at making the best of the years I've got left in cricket and capitalising so I can get myself into a stable financial position to support my family ... I've lost a lot of income out of not playing."

Apart from the loss of wages, the players' agent Clive Field estimates their legal bills at around 50 million Zimbabwean dollars. He said funding the players' ongoing legal skirmish with the ZCU was a prime motivation behind the proposed tour, which was still "very much at the drawing board stage".

Hypothetically, if the 15 rebels were accompanied by fellow Zimbabwean exiles Andy Flower, Murray Goodwin, Neil Johnson and Henry Olonga they could field a reasonably formidable outfit.

The cricketing futures of most of the 15 are at this stage unclear. Streak is playing for Warwickshire, Sean Ervine has moved to Western Australia and Andy Blignaut has been mentioned as a possible replacement for Shane Watson at Tasmania. For the rest, any kind of tour - official or unofficial, rebel or otherwise - might seem a particularly tantalising prospect.