MUGABE´S GOOGLY

l ZIMBABWE'S last-minute decision to allow 13 UK media cricket correspondents to enter the country to cover the series of one-day matches between England and Zimbabwe was either an untypical climbdown by Mugabe or a cunningly calculated piece of brinkmanship. Many observers of the ludicrously long-running saga of this England tour will have hoped that Mugabe would maintain his refusal to accredit several of the press party and that, accordingly, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) would withdraw from the engagement. Several of the England cricketers, to judge from their reported and recorded comments, were among those who thought in this way. There has never been much enthusiasm for a tour that has attracted widespread criticism from human rights organisations in both countries. But the International Cricket Council (ICC), under whose auspices the tour takes place, have always insisted that England must carry out the engagement or face severe financial penalties. The British government has remained beyond the boundary, insisting that the visit to Zimbabwe was a cricketing rather than a political matter, although on Wednesday a Foreign Office minister did tell the Zimbabwean charge d'affaires in London of the UK's “deep concern” over the media ban. Why did Mugabe change his mind? Possibly he realised that the ICC had at last lost patience with Zimbabwe when its chairman Ehsan Mani, a London-based Pakistani banker, told BBC radio's Today programme that if the exclusion of some of the British media was not withdrawn the ICC would have “a huge amount of sympathy for the ECB over the way the matter has been handled by the Government of Zimbabwe”. That change of heart would probably have been enough for the ECB to pack its bags and return home but instead Mugabe changed his mind just in time. By Monitor