EVEN to contemplate sending an England cricket team to Zimbabwe is reprehensible.

To maintain sporting links with a regime as abhorrent as Robert Mugabe's is tantamount to condoning what is happening in the country.

The British Government should have taken a lead in the issue. Not only should it have instigated sporting sanctions, it also should have stepped up political, diplomatic and economic isolation of what it regards as a pariah state.

The cricketing authorities - the ECB and ICC - should not have put financial considerations above all others.

The only party in this sorry and sordid saga who deserve our sympathy are the England players.

They have been abandoned by a weak-willed Government, and blackmailed by cricketing authorities, threatening them with the possible financial ruin of the English game, which will rob them of their livelihood and deny money at cricket's grassroots.

The fact that Zimbabwe is on the point of starvation because of a corrupt regime could not stop the tour going ahead. Systematic tortures and imprisonment of Mr Mugabe's opponents could not stop the tour going ahead.

And yet, the fact that some journalists have been prevented from entering Zimbabwe has brought the tour to the brink of cancellation and even prompted the Foreign Office to pass critical comments.

The signal this sends out to the rest of the world is that we care more for the freedom of movement for a dozen or so hacks than the welfare of tens of thousands of oppressed people in Zimbabwe.

Our Government, the ICC and the ECB should hang their heads in shame for not having the moral courage to take a stand, and abandoning their responsibilities to a group of sportsmen.