ZIMBABWE HORROR IS JUST NOT CRICKET

Salisbury MP and former Sports Minister Robert Key believes the English Cricket Team should not play in Zimbabwe. He said, 'It is not necessary to play the World Cup matches in Zimbabwe. It beggars belief that both the game's governing body and the individual players should hesitate for one moment over this. That tragic country is in ruins. Millions of people are facing death by hunger and Aids. There are families now in Salisbury who escaped from Mugabe's terror this year with their lives and nothing else, after 50 years of farming. That Government is evil and any crumb of comfort will be used for propaganda. Sport can be a great bridge-builder - but it has gone too far for that in Zimbabwe.

'The England Captain, Nasser Hussain, has written that he is not in a position to evaluate the Zimbabwe position in sufficient depth. He said it is 'faintly ridiculous' to suppose that the England Captain and management have the time to sit down and watch TV and come to an informed moral judgment -'to make such a complicated decision' - about going to Zimbabwe.'

Robert said, 'It is not complicated. It is a quick and simple moral choice. If the International Cricket Council and the individual English players can't work this one out, it says a lot about the current state of world cricket and everything about the apparently terminal collapse of English cricket. I played cricket at school and university and umpired it for another 16 years. I now find it very hard to argue that cricket could even be considered to be England's national game'