Just not cricket
“Cricket civilizes people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen”. Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe said this in 1984. These words now sound hollow – Zimbabwe both as a nation and a cricket team is in dire straits. Since 1999 Mugabe’s “land reforms” involved seizing land owned by white farmers without paying any compensation. This caused food production to plummet, thought to be the chief cause of hyperinflation. Inflation in Zimbabwe is estimated at 5000%. Men’s life expectancy has declined from 60 in 1990 to just 37 years in 2006. Women’s life expectancy is even lower, at 34 years. What was Mugabe’s reaction to this? To build a £2 million museum, the size of a football pitch, dedicated to his life and achievements.
Zimbabwe’s best cricketers have left the country, and many now play in the English domestic league. Their replacements are youngsters, only about the standard of average club cricketers. They are due to tour England next in 2009, and the British government may ban the team from touring because of hostility to Mugabe’s regime. This is not the first time this has happened. In the 2003 World Cup England refused to play in Zimbabwe because of “safety fears”, after much dithering from the Labour government and the England and Wales Cricket Board.
Zimbabwe have not played Test cricket since 2005, but still play in international one-day tournaments. Some feel that their involvement in international cricket legitimises Mugabe’s rule. It is to be hoped that Brown takes a more forceful role on the Zimbabwe question than his predecessor. For all Tony Blair’s talk of “liberal interventionism”, his government’s spineless attitude to Zimbabwe was another foreign policy disaster. Firm action is needed to help a nation in crisis, and that requires far more than merely banning its cricket team.
Cory
