Kerre Woodham: Cricket could be the key

Yet again, the New Zealand cricketers have been put on the spot over whether to tour Zimbabwe. Martin Snedden has told the players they will face no financial penalty if they bail from the tour, and Helen Clark is refusing, quite rightly, exhortations from the Greens that the cricketers be prevented from going.

So the decision on touring has been placed on the shoulders of the individual players. It's an unfair burden. The Zimbabwe problem belongs to the ICC, but the members of cricket's governing body are doing a Pontius Pilate and washing their hands of the issue. They trot out the old line that sport and politics don't mix, and that it's up to governments to decide whether or not to ban sporting contact with Zimbabwe.

Of course, the isolation of South Africa was a key component in helping to bring about the end of apartheid, but the situation is not so black and white in Zimbabwe. There is no official policy of apartheid, and if you start making moral judgments about how countries are run, where would you end?

Do we refuse to play Pakistan because members of the opposition political party have been rounded up and illegally detained?

Do we steer clear of India until the Government manages to eliminate bonded child labour, bride-burning and discrimination against the lower castes? Australia's record for Aboriginal deaths in custody doesn't stand too much scrutiny and, as for us, we appear on Amnesty International's bad buggers list for our treatment of Ahmed Zaoui.

For all that, Zimbabwe seems to be alone in refusing to even attempt to clean up its backyard, and for sticking two fingers to the international community.

There is no doubt Robert Mugabe is barking, and he's directly responsible for the misery of millions in Zimbabwe. Would stopping the Black Caps' tour to Zimbabwe help bring about change in the country? No, but it might hurt Mugabe. The man is an avowed cricket fan.

There's a story, possibly apocryphal, which says he learned to love cricket while a guest of Her Majesty in her prison, not her palace. He is a patron of the Zimbabwe Cricket Club and has been quoted as saying: "Cricket civilises people and creates good gentlemen. I want everyone to play cricket in Zimbabwe; I want ours to be a nation of gentlemen."

Yes. Well. You get the point. He's a big fan. So it would make a difference if the ICC sent Zimbabwe to Coventry. And as for the ICC saying it should be left to governments to make moral judgements, it was the sporting associations who shunned South Africa back in the 70s. They were the ones who took the lead and governments followed in their wake.

Phil Goff has said Zimbabwe's cricketers, who are planning to tour here at the end of the year, will be denied visas, so maybe Mugabe will give New Zealand Cricket an out by retaliating with a tit-for-tat cancellation of the Black Caps tour. And maybe Richie Benaud's suggestion that Bangladesh and Zimbabwe be removed from the top-tier cricketing nations, on the basis of poor performance, would also remove the Zimbabwe issue.

Mind you, after Australia's seeing-to at the hands of the Bangladeshis, that argument might not stack up for too much longer. The ICC should take a hard line with Mugabe - it may well be the only international body Mugabe will listen to.