| krishna |
Posted
on 28-Jan-03 01:24 PM
The recent hot topic for cricket fans around the world is, Whether England should play their alloted World Cup match in Zimbabwe, or not?
There has been lots of rumours going on around this topic and its even more going down since the World Cup is at the door. The matter has been worst since last week when England players received threatening letters by some unknown identities, that if they were to play their match in Zimbabwe, there would be havoc. There would be demonstrators who would target the cricket match and ruin it with destruction.
World Cup organizers and the ICC are coming under lots of pressure to prevent staging world cup matches in Zimbabwe and Kenya. 4 matches are to be held in Zim and 2 in Kenya. But both England and NewZealand have pressured ICC not to held any matches in both the countries, due to security problems. Although security has been tightened in Harare and Nairobi where the world cup matches will be held, it still remains to be seen if they would host any matches.
For now it seems highly unlikely that the organizers and the ICC would prevent staging alloted matches in both the countries due to quota that they have given to the countries to host these matches, beforehand. The Zimbabwe cricket board and Kenya Cricket board are both coming under immense pressure for security to players but they are confident that there would be enough security for the matches to go well.
There has been unspecified intelligence about further attacks in East Africa, including Kenya. The ICC have already rejected the England's proposal to transfer their match in Zimbabwe to South Africa.
NewZealand discotinuation of their match in Kenya seems backed up by the Karachi bomb blast where they abandoned their test match in Pakistan immediately. It is understandable that the NZ cricket board donot want to risk their player's life.
In my opinion, sport is sport, politics is politics. That's the bottom line. It is not the job of a national team to make grand gestures to give their government kudos. Whether the matches go ahead or not, cricket fans around the world are sadenned at the prospect of political regime in a fair play cricket match.
I shall now invite Sajha Cricket fans to give their opinions on the subject that is taking hot turmoil in this recent cricketing era.
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