West Indies cancel A team tour of Zimbabwe
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| Published on Friday, June 29, 2007 |
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BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (Reuters): The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) have cancelled their proposed A team tour of Zimbabwe this year.
A WICB spokesman in Antigua said on Thursday a full statement would be issued outlining the reasons.
The troubled southern African country has pulled out of test cricket although a team took part in this year's one-day World Cup in the Caribbean.
Last month Australia Prime Minister John Howard ordered the national team to pull out of a scheduled one-day series in September.
"We are convinced that for the tour to go ahead there would be an enormous propaganda boost to the (Robert) Mugabe regime," Howard said. "The Mugabe regime is behaving like the Gestapo towards its political opponents."
Grenada Prime Minister Keith Mitchell, who is head of the Caribbean Community's (Caricom) sub-committee on cricket, said this week that he felt the WICB would be making a big mistake if they went ahead with the tour. The 15-member Caricom is a grouping of Caribbean heads of government.
Pressure had been mounting on the WICB to abandon the June 30 to July 24 trip which would have included three four-day matches and two one-day games against the Zimbabwe senior team.
Last week, Dinanath Ramnarine, president of the West Indies Players Association, said he had informed the WICB that the players could not agree to the tour because safety concerns.
Captain Sylvester Joseph subsequently announced that he had pulled out of the tour.
On Thursday the executive board of the International Cricket Council (ICC) began a two-meeting at Lord's in which the question of Zimbabwe was to be discussed. The ICC cricketing committee has opposed a return to test cricket, provisionally scheduled for November.
The Zimbabwe government withdrew their team from test cricket last year after many experienced players quit the team because of differences with the national board.
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