Zimbabwe opposition calls for tour to be cancelled

It's not only in England that the debate on touring Zimbabwe is heating up - now the subject is beginning to focus minds in Australia. And the pressure was increased with a plea from the Movement for Democratic Change (Zimbabwe's main opposition party) to the Australian team to scrap their proposed trip in May.

Speaking on South African radio, Nkanyiso Maqeda, a spokesman for the MDC, said that the tour would hand a propaganda coup to Robert Mugabe's beleaguered regime. "To come in and endorse that regime is really the tragedy, that's what the Australian players will have done," he said. "Certainly we'd be very disappointed if they were to come and prop up the regime."

Those views were endorsed by Gibson Sibanda,the vice-president of the MDC, who was in Europe requesting the European Union to extend its sanctions against Zimbabwe. He warned that any tour would be a "pat on the back for Mugabe"

But Vince Hogg, the Zimbabwe board's managing director, insisted that the tour should proceed. "It's certainly not complicated for us," he explained "We're cricket administrators and we're just talking about the game of cricket in Zimbabwe, so it's very simple for us."

Cricket Australia (CA) has maintained the official ICC line that tours should not be cancelled on moral grounds. "Our position is pretty well set and has been for a long time," James Sutherland, the chief executive of CA, said. "We'll make a decision on any tour based on safety and security grounds. We don't see it as appropriate that we make judgments on those other issues."