Thursday, July 14, 2005

Should we tour?

I am interested in peoples opinions about whether the NZ cricket team should tour Zimbabwe? Their is a lot of pressure being put on the government to ban the cricket team from touring due to the human rights abuses in Zimbabwe and the fact that Mugabe is a patron of Zimbabwe cricket.
Currently the governments stance is that they can not stop the cricket team from touring as it was be an abuse of the NZ players human rights. They are saying it is up to NZ cricket to pull the plug. Problem is unless the government ban the NZ players from going then NZ cricket becomes liable for reimbursing the Zim team for the cost of the tour, by the time TV rights are taken into account this would be millions.

So what should happen?

My feeling is that the government should stop them from going, we can't be seen to support that regime in anyway. Although I think it is sad that the international community has done very little to stop what is going on in Zimbabwe and believe something should have been done a long time ago. It should not be left up to our sportsman to fight the political battle

Secondly the international Cricket Council should have suspended Zim from all cricket, due to the horrible conditions of this country.

I truly wonder if all the promises from the G8 will do much if we are going to fail to act in key situations like the one in Zimbabwe.

So what are your thoughts, should sports teams be used to make a political stand?

3 comments:

Aaron More said...

The problem is NZ cricket don't really want to go, but if they don't just because they don't want too they will have to pay a fine and costs of up to 5 Million (which NZ cricket can not afford).

If the Government makes it illegal then their is an out in the ICC cricket contract with NZC which means NZC would not be liable

As it is NZC don't really have a choice, if the pull out they put their financial future at a huge risk.

If the UN was doing its job properly anyway it wouldn't be left to sportsman to make protests against the likes of Zimbabwe

gazza said...

They should tour Zimbabwe.

Don't get me wrong, Mugabe's regime is vile and what he is doing is sick, but in the end, the only people the cancellation of the tour is going to affect is the common Zimbabwean.

As for Mugabe, well, he'll just shrug it off and continue bulldozing houses. It won't affect him in any serious way, and that's why the tour should go ahead, for those he's displacing.

Anonymous said...

Good to see NZ got a win onus of $20,000,000 Zim. About $2000 NZ.
Wow