Throw Zimbabwe out, says Rahul Dravid

Well, perhaps he didn't exactly say that. But that's a good line to grab your attention anyway.

Rahul Dravid, who would be the only member of the MCC's World Cricket committee still playing international cricket, perhaps has more things to worry about (such as who will open India's batting in the tests against Bangladesh and why on earth the BCCI signed up to play cricket in Bangladesh in May) than if Zimbabwe should play international cricket. The MCC's World Cricket Committee (find me a more grandiose name please) declared that in the opinion of its members, Zimbabwe should be barred from test and ODI cricket until the cricket infrastructure there was rebuilt.

The Australian government's decision directing Cricket Australia not to send its team to Zimbabwe was obviously the right one. At the very least, it was a much better show than that from the UK government and the ECB on touring Zimbabwe a few years ago.

The UK government, while indicating that it was not in favour of the ECB sending a team to play in Zimbabwe, did not instruct the ECB that they shouldn't send a team. This then led to a situation where England toured Zimbabwe but several media organizations from England were not allowed to cover the series.

England played a one-day series , where the likes of Ian Bell & Kevin Pietersen made an impact. In fact, that one-day series was so pathetic that Michael Vaughan nearly made a century and England won 4-0! For not playing the test series, the ECB coughed up £135,000 as compensation.

I wouldn't be surprised if the BCCI stepped in and committed the Indian team to play in Zimbabwe.

Labels: australia, dravid, mcc, zimbabwe