UK threat to deny visa to Chingoka

UK threat to deny visa to Chingoka

BAN: Peter Chingoka could be barred from attending ICC meeting

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ZIMBABWE Cricket chairman Peter Chingoka will be barred from attending the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) annual conference in London in June, reports said Thursday.

The Daily Telegraph newspaper said the UK government will use passport legislation to block Chingoka from attending the International Cricket Council's annual conference at Lord's in June.

Visas could also be refused to Zimbabwe's players if Chingoka insists on pressing ahead with their scheduled tour of England in 2009, the paper reported.

Chingoka told New Zimbabwe on Thursday that he has not been informed of any changes to the June invitations and programme.

“As far as I am concerned, I will still attend the conference because we have not been informed of any changes to that programme,” he said.

Earlier this week, a BBC report revealed the UK government was planning a blanket ban on Zimbabwean sportsmen as a mark of protest against human rights abuses by President Robert Mugabe’s government, although a spokesman for Prime Minister Gordon Brown later said the ban would be restricted to cricket.

Don Foster, the Conservative Party’s spokesman for Culture, Media and Sport for the Liberal Democrats, said he agreed that Chingoka should be denied entry to the country.

But he also criticised the idea that individual Zimbabwean sportsmen like Manchester City striker Benjani Mwaruwari and Wimbledon Women’s Tennis Doubles champion Cara Black should suffer because of Mugabe’s government.

The Telegraph said it has emerged from a meeting between the UK government and the ICC last week, that “there is no appetite” for Zimbabwe’s tour of England in the summer of 2009.

The tour presents an awkward conundrum as Zimbabwe are due to return to England later that same summer to participate in the World Twenty20 championships.

The government may feel that they can be selective about visas, granting them for the Twenty20 tournament but not for the tour (which would consist of at least three 50-over internationals).

But the imminent appointment of former ECB chairman David Morgan to the ICC presidency should at least give England a sympathetic ear within the organisation.

Meanwhile, the accountancy firm KPMG have been investigating claims that Zimbabwe Cricket’s lavish funding from the ICC has been misappropriated.

Their findings are due to be discussed at the ICC board meeting in Dubai on March 17-18, and if any of these allegations can be substantiated, the whole affair will take a new twist.
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