ICC being dragged to the table

Tim May: 'Players don't just want words' © Getty Images

After months, if not years, of steadfastly refusing to be drawn into any involvement with the deteriorating situation surrounding Zimbabwe cricket, the International Cricket Council is finally being forced to climb down off the fence and consider what it should do.

This has not resulted from a sudden attack of guilt or responsibility, but more from growing international pressure that the body which likes to portray itself as the guardian of the game around the world cannot sit idly by while that very game implodes in the homeland of one of its senior members.

Yesterday, Tim May, the influential chief executive of the international players association (FICA) travelled to Dubai to meet with ICC representatives, as did Richard Bevan, his English counterpart. Today, Malcolm Speed and Dave Richardson, the ICC chief executive and general manager, will hold talks with Zimbabwe Cricket Union representatives.

So far, the ICC appears to have accepted everything it has been told by the ZCU as gospel, regardless of the many conflicting messages emerging from within Zimbabwe. This is not lost on May. "Players don't just want words," he said before leaving Australia on Wednesday. "They want action to preserve the game they love. The ICC's strategic plan states that there is no place in the game for racism. The ICC is charged with upholding these values."

Meanwhile, in London the pressure to cancel England's tour, and for the ICC to step in, grew. At a press conference, Trudy Stevenson, an MP for the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), the opposition party in Zimbabwe, urged the England board to scrap this November's tour. "Cricket is a microcosm of the way in which the Zanu-PF seeks to impose its control on every facet of life in Zimbabwe," she said, "through patronage, bribery, violence, rape and state-sponsored murder."

Stevenson carried with her a message from Morgan Tsvangirai, the MDC's leader, pleading for action from the international community. "It is our view that, since cricket is largely a Commonwealth game," he said, "Commonwealth nations should be lobbied to support the boycott and to come together as members of ICC to tell the ICC board to endorse the boycott."

The days of the ICC maintaining a safe distance are drawing to a close.