ENGLAND'S cricketers should not take part in the World Cup which begins in February in Zimbabwe.

With the European Union imposing sanctions and the Commonwealth suspending its membership, Zimbabwe is a pariah state led by a man who is a leading member of the "axis of evil".

President Robert Mugabe has driven the white farmers from their land and replaced them with his cronies. Land reform was required, but not in this corrupt and racist way which has resulted in a disastrous drop in food production in a country that was once "the breadbasket of Africa". Millions of Zimbabweans are now on the verge of starvation and cynically, Mugabe is preventing aid supplies from reaching those areas which voted against him in March's fixed election. The dramatic decline in this once relatively prosperous country is having a worrying knock-on effect on the rest of Africa which perenially lives on a knife edge.

Ironically, the North-East of England will be among the losers should England pull out: two Durham and three Yorkshire players will probably be in the squad to be named tomorrow, and Chester-le-Street's inaugural Test match against Zimbabwe in June - which will be worth an estimated £4m to the local economy - will be in doubt.

Yet, if the World Cup goes ahead, England's captain Nasser Hussain will probably find himself in a similar position to athletes at the 1936 Olympic Games in Adolf Hitler's Germany: saluting a vile dictator.

The British Government has been criticised for not banning the England players from going to Zimbabwe, usually by the same opponents who have accused it of trampling over civil liberties by trying to ban fox-hunting.

This is a trifle unfair, but it is true that the Government has been aware of the World Cup for a year and has been disappointingly slow in giving the cricketing authorities sufficient guidance. Until Clare Short's principled intervention on Saturday, the Government had only said that it hoped the International Cricket Council (ICC) and the English Cricket Board (ECB) would "review" their decision to hold the tournament in Zimbabwe.

And it is the ICC and the ECB which are ultimately to blame for this situation. Even the International Olympic Committee, which has in the past exhibited very odd behaviour, would not award the 2012 Olympics to Baghdad, but the ICC is allowing the World Cup to go to Harare.

It is allowing cricket's opulent circus, fuelled by television money, to pitch up in a country where millions are being starved, and it will be giving revenue, succour and a platform to the man the rest of the world holds responsible for that starvation.

No wonder so many people, both in foreign countries and at home, struggle to understand cricket.