The price of morality

It's been a week for U-turns in Britain.

On Monday, Tony Blair, who had spent much of his second term in office insisting that there was not going to be a referendum on the European constitution, suddenly had a Road-to-Damascus-like vision and decided that actually putting it to the people was a jolly good idea after all. Less than 24 hours later it was the turn of the England & Wales Cricket Board.

Ever since they unveiled Des Wilson's report on Zimbabwe in January, board officials had been insisting that the moral objections to November's tour made the trip highly unlikely. But then the International Cricket Council - for whom morality matters not a jot when weighed against the dollar - started flexing its muscles. It quickly become apparent that the fines and penalties that the ECB faced from the ICC dwarfed likely losses resulting from sponsors withdrawing, and the bad publicity the board would attract from the British press and media.

Yesterday's meeting at Lord's showed that the ECB's U-turn was almost complete. John Read, its director of communications, admitted that the financial issues had replaced moral ones in the decision-making process, and that the worst-case scenario would leave the ECB some £40-50million out of pocket. At least we now know the price of turning a blind eye.

What really sticks in the throat, however, are the comments uttered following the meeting with Peter Chingoka, the Zimbabwe Cricket Union chairman, and Ozias Bvute, a known Mugabe henchman.

Chingoka is inextricably linked with the galloping politicisation of the ZCU. There are countless examples of the victimisation by board officials of anyone, regardless of colour, who opposes the Mugabe regime. Several out-and-out Zanu-PF enforcers - Bvute being a good example - now control the board, and while Chingoka might not be nearly as extreme, he has sanctioned what is happening, if only by his silent compliance.

And yet when he had the front to sit down at Lord's and claim that the ZCU was a multiracial, non-political organisation, free of influence from government influence, the ECB officials had made such an about-turn that they swallowed it hook, line and sinker. In January, Wilson said: "Can we tour this country knowing what we do about its stance on human rights and the suffering of its people?" Now we know the answer.

The Guardian's Lawrence Booth summed up the situation. "Sport and morality appear to be mutually exclusive," he wrote. "And for this we should blame - in descending order - the ZCU, the ICC and the ECB."

The only hope is that the ECB are playing a waiting game, stalling in the hope that the escalating crisis which threatens the future of cricket in Zimbabwe takes the decision out of their hands.

If it doesn't, England will carry on regardless and tour. An as-yet-unknown number of England players will choose to stay away - following the lead of Australia's Stuart MacGill - so there is the unedifying prospect of an England 2nd XI playing a Zimbabwe 3rd XI. How can the ICC argue that such a spectacle is in cricket's best interests, aside from it further devaluing the status of international cricket?

But to those in charge, such considerations seem to be irrelevant. The last few weeks have shown that cricket's administrators are effectively morally bankrupt and will condone and endorse anything in the scramble for filthy lucre.