Newsday

By Staff Writer

2  July 2010 2010

Harare Children’s Home cannot pay school fees or staff this month. This was revealed by the treasurer Adrian Watson at the home’s 90th annual general meeting recently.

Food costs $3 000 a month for the 90 children, schooling a further $2 000 and $4 000 in salaries for the 26 staff members.

The home is also failing to pay rates, repairs, electricity and telephone bills.

“Our food bill is so low because on average we receive

$2 000 in donations which enable us to feed our children properly,” said Watson, who has been managing the home’s finances for 45 years.

“Until hyper-inflation, we had sufficient reserves to be able to survive a lean month but these were completely depleted at the end of 2008,” he said, adding that the home survived on the goodwill of individuals and various organisations.

He appealed to Education minister David Coltart, who was sympathetic but said that the ministry was financially hamstrung.

While the children at the home should benefit under government’s Better Education Assistance Module, both Roosevelt and Admiral Tait schools also require them to pay the school levy, which they were unable to do.

“Four new primary school children were turned away this term because we hadn’t paid the fees for our children for the previous term,” said chairman of the home, Victor Kufahakutane.
The Ministry of Social Welfare was expected to pay $15 per child per month but this had not been paid for years. School uniforms for children also posed more problems.

There are 90 children in the home and a further three were being fostered pending adoption. The home has admitted nine children this year, re-admitted two and discharged two.

Two senior girls have moved out, one was married at the home over the Easter weekend – the first wedding there in 90 years – and the youngest baby was reunited with her maternal aunt.

Mayoress Fikele Masunda was guest of honour as the mayor is a permanent trustee, the municipality having donated the land for the home, which was built by the Methodist Church.

ABC.net.au

By Sally Sara

1 July 2010

TONY EASTLEY: Cricket Australia says it is astounded by the rejection of John Howard for the role.

Rachel Carbonell is speaking here with Cricket Australia’s public affairs general manager Peter Young.

RACHEL CARBONELL: John Howard says he won’t be withdrawing his nomination so what now will Cricket Australia and New Zealand Cricket do?

PETER YOUNG: What we’ll be doing is reconvening with our respective boards. Our two chairmen have got approval from our boards to support John Howard’s nomination as the only approval they took to Singapore.

So before we discuss process or names we’ll be reconvening at a board level, we’ll then talk with each other and decide what to do moving forward.

RACHEL CARBONELL: John Howards says that this is a rejection of the two cricket boards and that those cricket boards now need to seriously think about the implications for them.

PETER YOUNG: Certainly we were, as our chairman said last night, gutted at the response. We followed the process exactly.

We’ve put up the most eminent candidate that has ever been considered for that role and we believe he is the best candidate that we can put forward.

RACHEL CARBONELL: And by that do you mean what you do in terms of what candidate is put forward or what you do in terms of the two cricket board’s actual role?

PETER YOUNG: That will be a matter for our directors and our chairmen to discuss when we meet.

RACHEL CARBONELL: Former head of New Zealand Cricket Sir John Anderson’s name’s been widely touted already, what can you say about that?

PETER YOUNG: What the two chairmen said last night was that they are not going to discuss particular names or specific process until they have had a chance to take advice from their own directors and then talk together again.

TONY EASTLEY: Cricket Australia’s Peter Young speaking to Rachel Carbonell in Melbourne.

Former Sri Lankan captain and now a member of the Sri Lankan parliament Arjuna Ranatunga says John Howard would have been good for international cricket and his nomination should have been accepted.

Mr Howard has also been praised by Zimbabwe’s sports minister.

South Asia correspondent, Sally Sara reports.

SALLY SARA: It’s not the kind of headline John Howard was hoping for.

REPORTER: And in breaking news coming in the ICC board has rejected John Howard’s nomination for the top post the ICC.

SALLY SARA: But, the former prime minister has won some support.

Retired Sri Lankan cricket captain and now member of the Sri Lankan Parliament Arjuna Ranatunga says Mr Howard would have been a good choice to protect the game.

ARJUNA RANATUNGA: I’m sure that John Howard had that capacity and the capability of developing cricket into some of the areas which has been very neglected badly.

SALLY SARA: The cricketing memories run long and deep in South Asia. Mr Ranatunga says many Sri Lankans find it hard to forgive Mr Howard for his comments in the Muralitharan chucking controversy.

ARJUNA RANATUNGA: When a prime minister of a country make a statement like that manner, it hurts.

SALLY SARA: Arjuna Ranatunga says members of the International Cricket Council need to step back and look at the big picture, instead of being caught up in petty issues.

Zimbabwe’s sports minister David Coltart has also called for restraint. He asked Zimbabwean cricket officials not to sign the letter against John Howard’s nomination.

DAVID COLTART: I asked them to formally abstain and that is what they appear to have done.

SALLY SARA: While some officials from Zimbabwe Cricket are supporters of President Mugabe and detest John Howard, the sports minister sees it the other way.

David Coltart is from the former opposition party and says John Howard deserves credit for speaking out against the Mugabe regime.

DAVID COLTART: We are very grateful there were people like John Howard in the international community who stood up and condemned these human rights abuses.

SALLY SARA: But, Mr Howard’s outspokenness has spooked some Zimbabwean cricket officials who feared he would go on a crusade against corruption and mismanagement.

The ICC has shelved an audit report into Zimbabwe Cricket for the past two years.

David Coltart has seen it, and says ironically it exonerates many of the current officials.

DAVID COLTART: So, if the world thinks that that report contains ammunition to sink the current administration of Zimbabwe Cricket, well then they have got it wrong.

SALLY SARA: The toxic mix of politics, billion dollar business, grudges and corruption has left John Howard sitting in the outer for now.

This is Sally Sara reporting for AM.

The Australian

By Malcolm Conn

1 July 2010

The Asian bloc flexed it muscles and the former PM missed out.

FOR all the misty-eyed nostalgia surrounding the Ashes, cricket is now very much a south Asian game, as John Howard has found to his detriment.

The former prime minister’s bid to become president of the International Cricket Council failed on purely racial lines, much to the embarrassment of a sport which continues to shred its scant credibility on an all too regular basis.

“The ICC usually descends into racism and nationalism over matters of substance. This time they’ve descended into racism and nationalism,” one former cricket official told me with a weary laugh.

The ICC is run by the executive board, made up of the presidents and chairmen of the so-called 10 Test-playing nations: Australia, Bangladesh, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, South Africa, West Indies and Zimbabwe.

It is a disparate bunch divided by cultural chasms and deep-seated mistrust and mired by politics.

In the end, Howard solicited the support of only the three “white” nations, Australia, New Zealand and England. He needed seven votes to be sure of the top job, which due process and convention said should have been his for the taking months ago once he was jointly nominated by Australia and New Zealand.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India now generates up to 80 per cent of cricket’s wealth so, by and large, what India says goes. If the BCCI had supported Howard, he would have been elected, probably without objection.

In the end BCCI president Shashank Manohar, 52, was willing to embarrass his one-time mentor Sharad Pawar, the incoming ICC president, to ensure the Afro-Asia bloc held firm.

Pawar, minister for agriculture in the Indian government, publicly supported Howard last month, but the reclusive Manohar showed loyalty to the anti-colonial forces following strenuous objections from South Africa and a duplicitous Zimbabwe.

Howard’s political past caught up with him. His opposition to sanctions against apartheid South Africa, believing they would do more harm than good, and support for selected sanctions and travel bans against Zimbabwe’s Mugabe regime, which included Zimbabwe Cricket president Peter Chingoka, were held against him.

Australia’s central aim for nominating Howard was to bring good governance to the ICC and give cricket a broader standing on the world stage.

The ICC is not interested in good governance, as it showed by sacking its previous chief executive, Malcolm Speed, for attempting to bring Zimbabwe to account.

Zimbabwe, supported by South Africa, led the charge against Speed and have done the same against Howard.

The ICC seems more interested in centralising power in India than expanding the game.

Led by objections from India, the ICC has refused the opportunity to take the game truly global by making it an Olympic sport via the hugely popular Twenty20 format.

Regardless of what impression will be generated during this summer’s highly anticipated Ashes series, the biggest and most important cricket contest in the world is not Australia versus England but India versus Pakistan, when their governments let them play each other. Greg Chappell, who spent a fraught time as India coach a few years ago, described India-Pakistan as the Ashes multiplied by 10.

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have 1.5 billion people, almost a quarter of the world’s population and unlike Australia and England, where football codes are the dominant sports, cricket on the subcontinent is somewhere between a religion and a national obsession.

It is fitting that this week’s series of ICC meetings, which finishes today with the largely ceremonial annual meeting, is being held in the Raffles City Convention Centre adjacent to Raffles Hotel, a bastion of colonialism. The resentment of colonialism hangs thickly in the air at ICC meetings.

The convention centre is where London won its 2012 Olympic bid after days of high-powered wheeling and dealing. ICC cocktail parties and dinners have ensured the same is taking place this week on a smaller but no less frantic scale.

Have a late night drink in a hotel bar with ICC delegates and the resentment against Australia and England eventually begins to ooze out from the non-white countries which now dominate cricket.

The very white Imperial Cricket Council was formed in 1909 by Australia, England and South Africa. Even when South Africa was eventually kicked out in the early 1970s for its apartheid selection policies, Australia and England ran what was by then called the International Cricket Conference as a fiefdom with a condescending and elitist view towards all other cricketing nations.

How the world has changed with the rise and rise of India’s now overwhelming economic power over the past decade.

Zimbabwe’s stance has frustrated attempts by its sports minister, impressive human rights lawyer and long-time Mugabe opponent David Coltart, to rebuild cricket ties. “One can hardly normalise relations with New Zealand Cricket and Cricket Australia if our first act is going to be to stand in the way of their preferred choice. Zimbabwe Cricket understand that,” Coltart told The Australian after a recent visit to both countries.

Given the way the fractious ICC has behaved over Howard suggests that sadly, this is normal cricket relations.

ABC

July 1, 2010

Former International Cricket Council boss Malcolm Speed says world cricket’s governing body has insulted Australia and New Zealand by blocking former prime minister John Howard’s vice-presidential bid.

India, Sri Lanka, the West Indies, Pakistan, Bangladesh and South Africa have so far given no reason for their decision to block Mr Howard’s ICC candidacy yesterday.

“I think it’s an insult to Australia and New Zealand, it shows great disrespect to those countries,” Mr Speed told ABC News Breakfast this morning.

“I think Mr Howard is entitled to feel angry.”

Mr Speed, a former head of the Australian Cricket Board, said the decision to blackball Mr Howard had been “very poorly handled”.

He said Cricket Australia was “seeking to break the mould” with Mr Howard’s application.

“They wanted a man of character and substance,” he said.

Apart from Australia and New Zealand, only England supported the move to install Mr Howard as vice-president, a move which would have seen him automatically become ICC president in 2012.

Mr Howard’s tough stance against Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and past criticism of Sri Lankan bowler Muttiah Muralidaran as a “chucker” were believed to be key factors in the ICC’s decision.

This morning Opposition frontbencher Peter Dutton, a former junior minister under Mr Howard, described the decision as “completely unacceptable”.

“It is the normal practice that the nominee from Australia and New Zealand would be accepted,” he said.

“It is completely unacceptable that because John Howard had strong views against Robert Mugabe the [Zimbabwean] dictator that he should be locked out of this job.

“If the international cricket community wants to restore its integrity then they need to reconsider this decision. This is now, I think, a significant diplomatic and international issue.”

While Zimbabwe did not sign the rejection letter, it is understood Mr Howard’s criticism of its president Mr Mugabe, turned the country against him.

Last night Mr Howard said he had been given “no reason” for the rejection of his candidacy, which he described as “disturbing”.

“Yes, I am particularly [disappointed] as no reason has been given by those delegates who at this stage are saying that they don’t support it,” Mr Howard said.

“Under the new rules that were hammered out several years ago, unless it’s judged that the candidate doesn’t fit the job specification and that certainly wasn’t the case, or there’s some, you know, dark thing about him that’s been discovered, and that’s not the case, it should have been approved,” he added.

“It is not only quite disturbing to me, but it should also be disturbing to the cricketing organisations in both Australia and New Zealand.”

Mr Howard would not be drawn on speculation that cricket’s superpower India played a leading role in blocking his path to the ICC.

Neither would Cricket Australia’s spokesman Peter Young.

“We’re aware of a whole range of speculation but we’re not going to speculate publicly on what might be,” he said.

“We’d prefer people to actually say straight to our face what their concern is.”

But others, including cricket commentator Gideon Haigh, are not being so circumspect.

“The fact is that India controls about 80 per cent of the game’s global revenues, when it says, ‘jump,’ other countries say, ‘how high?'” he said.

“And basically they’ve decided that they can’t even be bothered with the ICC, they might as well run it all themselves.”

Mr Howard said he wore his criticisms of Mr Mugabe’s regime as a “badge of honour”.

“I have to wear that as a badge of honour because I thought it was a very bad regime,” he said.

“Although there have been improvements with the Coalition government, and we must try and make that work, the criticisms I made pre-dated those changes and they were totally justified.”

Zimbabwe’s sports minister David Coltart said some officials from Zimbabwe Cricket were supporters of Mr Mugabe and detested Mr Howard.

But he said Mr Howard deserved credit for speaking out against Mr Mugabe’s regime.

“We are very grateful there were people like John Howard in the international community who stood up and condemned these human rights abuses,” he said.

Mr Coltart said he asked Zimbabwean cricket officials not to sign the letter against John Howard’s nomination.

“I asked them to formally abstain, and that is what they appear to have done,” he said.

The Australian

1 July 2010

By Malcolm Conn

THE ICC snubbing of the former PM is a loss for cricket.

THE apparatchiks who so swiftly dispensed with Kevin Rudd last week have nothing on the faceless men of the International Cricket Council responsible for John Howard’s insidious demise.

The rejection of the former prime minister’s nomination for future president of cricket’s governing body was a gutless act committed by the presidents of cricket’s seven Afro-Asian countries, who could not even look Howard in the eye.

They have destroyed the ICC’s electoral system and cricket’s credibility in the process.

Zimbabwe, the pariah of cricket, began a whispering campaign against Howard months ago. Through the ICC’s anti-colonial machinations, it resulted in six of those seven presidents signing a letter on Tuesday night, after the first day of a two-day board meeting in Singapore, objecting to Howard’s nomination and refusing to let him address the board.

Only Zimbabwe, which began the rot, refrained from signing on the recommendation of its Sports Minister David Coltart, a long-time opponent of Robert Mugabe. Coltart has been trying to rebuild cricketing relations with Australia and New Zealand as part of an inclusive government.

Zimbabwe Cricket officials, who are closely aligned with Mugabe’s Zanu PF party, have been trying just as hard to tear them down.

The letter was an attempt to undermine Howard and force the countries that put him forward, Australia and New Zealand, to choose another candidate.

They picked the wrong man to bully. After a lifetime in politics, including 11 years as prime minister, Howard stepped squarely on to the front foot and went searching for answers from the presidents who were so keen to avoid him, button-holing one.

“I said, ‘What’s the issue?’ He said, ‘The issue is that some people around me think your appointment will be bad for cricket governance,’ ” Howard tells The Australian from Singapore. “I said, ‘How and why?’ He said he couldn’t say.”

Among the whispers, Howard’s support for targeted sanctions against Zimbabwe and opposition to economic sanctions against apartheid-era South Africa were apparently held against him. Howard rails against both suggestions. “I didn’t agree with economic sanctions against South Africa just as people like Helen Suzman, who was sympathetic to Mandela and the ANC, didn’t agree with them either,” he says.

“I’m not going to walk away from that, but these things weren’t mentioned.

“If I was a supporter of apartheid I could understand it, but I wasn’t. No Australian political figure of that era was sympathetic to apartheid, it’s just that people had different ways [of opposing it].”

Likewise, he is unfazed about his action against Zimbabwe while in government, with travel bans on officials including the duplicitous president of Zimbabwe Cricket, Peter Chingoka.

“I wear the criticism as a badge of honour. I don’t apologise in any way for the criticism I offered of the Mugabe regime,” Howard says. “If it was in some way based on past political positions, well, that’s a very bad precedent to be establishing for the ICC.

“I’m out of politics. I don’t have any political agenda internationally other than, of course, promoting good relations between Australia and our long-term friends, many of which are cricket-playing nations in both Asia and Africa.”

The cowardice of the secret seven was complete when, on Wednesday at Raffles City Convention Centre, those opposing Howard, which amounted to every leading cricket country except England, Australia and New Zealand, couldn’t even find the courage to take a formal vote.

Australia and New Zealand were simply asked to come back by the end of next month with another candidate. No explanation was given.

A furious Cricket Australia has called an emergency board meeting, to be held within a week, and refused to rule out renominating Howard, who refuses to withdraw his bid for the presidency.

Such a stand is likely to be futile and pragmatism is expected to take over as the fury of the snub subsides. No one wants to get cricket’s cash cow, India, off side.

Just how willing Australia and everyone else is to placate a nation responsible for up to 80 per cent of the game’s wealth became obvious when India last toured during the 2007-08 summer.

India lost the second Test in Sydney in close and contentious circumstances and demanded West Indian umpire Steve Bucknor be sacked for not giving Andrew Symonds out caught behind. The ICC sacked Bucknor.

Australia captain Ricky Ponting reported India’s spinner Harbhajan Singh for racial abuse against Symonds in the same Test and he was suspended by ICC match referee Mike Procter.

India threatened go home. Terrified that millions of dollars in television rights would disappear on the same plane, Cricket Australia held a late-night meeting with its increasingly disillusioned players, convincing them to drop the charge of racial abuse for simple abuse at an appeal.

They reluctantly agreed, the ICC made a complete hash of the appeal, and Harbhajan escaped suspension.

Cricket’s most powerful man is also its most faceless. Leading Indian-based cricket website Cricinfo describes Board of Control for Cricket in India president Shashank Manohar as an introvert bordering on reclusive.

A prominent Nagpur lawyer who became the BCCI president in 2008, he is said to be a man of simple tastes who does not carry a mobile phone or a watch, did not have a passport until 2007, and his first foreign trip was to Dubai to attend an ICC meeting in 2008.

Manohar was, quite ironically, a staunch Sharad Pawar loyalist. No longer. Pawar, who was elected yesterday as ICC president, with no vice-president following Howard’s rejection, had previously supported Howard, or at least the process that would have seen him elected. Manohar, too, had initially told Australia that India was supportive, then all went quiet. Apparently, Zimbabwe had been on the phone.

Such are the shifting stands of cricket politics. Manohar was once vice-president of the BCCI under Pawar and their relationship goes back to the time when Pawar was Maharashtra’s chief minister and his father, V. R. Manohar, the advocate general of the state.

Manohar was not the only one to be corralled back into the Afro-Asian bloc. Pakistan and Bangladesh told outgoing president David Morgan, a retired Welsh industrialist, that they too would support the process that should have rubber-stamped Howard into the job months ago. In the end neither did.

Former ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed, who was sacked in 2008 attempting to bring Zimbabwe to account for dubious financial dealings, described Pakistan Cricket Board president Ijaz Butt as a “buffoon”.

He wasn’t a great deal more complimentary towards former Bangladesh cricket heads.

“During my seven years as chief executive of ICC there were two presidents of the Bangladesh Cricket Board, both of whom were members of parliament and both of whom ended up in jail when there was a change of government,” Speed tells The Australian.

But Chingoka is the most disturbing and dangerous man on the ICC board, as he has proved again. A big man with a big smile in a starving country, he has followed the lead of his Zanu PF masters by destroying the game at all levels, just as Zanu PF has destroyed the country so those at the top can keep their snouts in the trough.

The Zimbabwe cricket team is a rump and has not played Test cricket for five years, yet still maintains full voting rights and all the millions of dollars in dividends that are distributed to the 10 full member countries.

As the new Sports Minister in the inclusive government, Coltart has been attempting to rebuild the national team by luring back disaffected players and administrators. He even asked his long-time protagonist Mugabe if he had any issue with Howard, an outspoken critic of Zimbabwe’s regime. “He said what’s past is past and he had no objection. That Zimbabwe Cricket must act in its best interest,” Coltart tells The Australian.

Sadly, The Herald in Zimbabwe, a Zanu PF mouthpiece, did not take the same conciliatory line about Howard’s dash to Harare last week for what proved to be a fruitless meeting with Chingoka and his flunkies.

The opinion piece is a rant that, once again, highlights the bizarre logic of a regime that has destroyed a country and its cricket.

“Cricket and world sport . . . does not need the likes of Howard, lest the sport be drawn into the gutters. He . . . cannot talk of developing a sport, which he has done so much to destroy for political ends,” the newspaper says. “He is a wolf in sheepskin, with the sole aim of returning the sport to the dark ages where it was a preserve of the Anglo-Saxon countries . . .

“He has nothing to offer to sport, which spreads a message of unity, against his racist thoughts.”

Remarkably, ZC keeps trying to tell the world it remains neutral on Howard, deflecting attention to South Africa and India.

The ICC’s decision to destroy its processes and protocols was criticised in an editorial in the Indian Express. “The campaign against Howard, more through rumours than official statements, centred on his decision when he was PM to put sanctions on cricket officials of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe,” the newspaper says.

“His comments on Muttiah Muralitharan’s [bowling] technique are also cited as proof of his insularity.

“In effect, the dissenting cricket boards are sending out the message that . . . they can keep out anybody who may have ever disagreed with one of them, that too in a personal or political capacity, with no reasons given. That’s dangerous for the sport.”

Malcolm Conn is chief cricket writer for The Australian.

The Telegraph

By Nick Hoult

30 June 2010

Andy Flower, the England coach, will advise the MCC on Thursday about reopening cricketing ties with Zimbabwe.

Flower’s own international career was ended in 2003 when he wore a black armband at a World Cup match in Harare to protest against the Robert Mugabe regime.

He has subsequently rebuilt his life in Britain while Zimbabwe have spent five years in the cricketing wilderness after losing Test status.

Last year their cricketers reluctantly withdrew from the World Twenty20 in England after it was made clear they would not get visas.

The Zimbabwe Cricket Union has also been hit by a string of allegations of financial irregularities.

But the return to the fold of several former leading cricketers and the appointment of the former England batsman and Surery coach Alan Butcher as head coach has led Zimbabwe to begin lobbying for a return of Test status.

The ZCU is also said to have cleaned up its act under the guidance of officials from Cricket South Africa, and the MCC is considering sending a team to tour there later this year, the first visit by an England side since 2004.

Flower, whose brother Grant will join Butcher’s staff after the English season, told Telegraph Sport: “There are some strong parallels in what has happened in the cricket scene and what has happened in the country.

“The Mugabe regime cannot last forever and already Morgan Tsvangirai and David Coltart [minister of sport] have a foot in the door in government, though I know it’s a tricky situation. At least their influence means there is constitutional debate and things have started to move in the right direction again on both those fronts.

“I think they are doing their best to resurrect cricket after a period of mismanagement and I’m glad there is this energetic push to get Zim back on the international stage. There are some very good people getting involved again.”

ABC

30 June 2010

MARK COLVIN: Another bad day for a former prime minister.

At the International Cricket Council meeting in Singapore, the former prime minister John Howard has failed in his bid to become the next vice president of the sport’s governing body.

The bid was lost without a vote being taken. But was it the fact that Mr Howard has never been a cricket administrator or his past criticisms of Robert Mugabe’s regime which scuttled the bid?

Malcolm Speed is a former chief executive of the ICC. I asked him about the decision a short time ago.

MALCOLM SPEED: I think it’s disgraceful. I think it’s an insult to Australian and New Zealand cricket. It’s a farcical situation where the best credentialed candidate ever put forward for the position of president of the International Cricket Council has been rejected on political grounds.

Now to put that into context – two things there. The current, the man who’s about to take over as president of the International Cricket Council, is a minister in the Indian government with very little background in cricket. If Australia and New Zealand say well that’s fine, we’ve put up our candidate and you’ve rejected him, then next in rotation is Pakistan and Bangladesh. The presidents of the cricket boards of both of those countries are appointed by the government, so we see a farcical situation here.

John Howard didn’t seek this position. He was approached by Cricket Australia. I think to say that he’s lost his bid is incorrect. Cricket Australia and Cricket New Zealand have lost the bid to have their chosen candidate appointed to this position.

MARK COLVIN: But why is opposition to Robert Mugabe so unpopular among other cricketing nations than Zimbabwe?

MALCOLM SPEED: I think it goes wider than just the opposition to Robert Mugabe. International cricket is a very complex and political organisation. I think there would be a multitude of reasons for rejecting Mr Howard’s nomination. The opposition to Mugabe perhaps one that plays out in Africa. Other reasons would play out in the Indian sub-continent.

MARK COLVIN: For instance that Mr Howard accused Muttiah Muralitharan, the Sri Lankan bowler, of being a chucker?

MALCOLM SPEED: Um, maybe but I think it’s perhaps more deep seated than that. I think there is a wish from some people involved in cricket in India to downgrade the status of the International Cricket Council, and having Mr Howard there as the incoming president in two years would be an obstacle for that objective. So I think it’s perhaps more deep seated than superficial instances such as calling Muralitharan a chucker. I think there’s more to it than that, but we’ll never know.

MARK COLVIN: Can you explain this to me. I’ve seen reports that although as you say it’s an Australia, New Zealand bid, I’ve seen some reports that there is anger that Sir John Anderson, a New Zealand candidate was rejected. What’s the background to all that?

MALCOLM SPEED: Well Sir John Anderson is a very fine man. He was the president of New Zealand Cricket for many years and served on the ICC board. Australia and New Zealand under this rotation system would have put forward a joint candidate. They did that after a good deal of consultation and quite some anguish between those two countries’ cricket boards. And John Howard was the chosen candidate of the two countries and as I understand it from afar, both countries are still well and truly behind Mr Howard.

MARK COLVIN: And there is a system of rotation in this is there? I mean Mr Howard should normally have just been a shoe-in?

MALCOLM SPEED: Should have been a rubber stamp. In past instances with a system similar to this other countries have put up candidates where Australia and New Zealand could have taken exception to them but they were prepared to respect the sovereignty of the country that had put them forward and they voted for those people to take over the presidency of ICC. For the countries now to reject Australia and New Zealand’s candidate is an insult.

MARK COLVIN: Now, why does it matter? What would John Howard have been able to do that he now won’t be able to do?

MALCOLM SPEED: It’s a good question Mark. I think what John Howard would have brought to the position was experience. Whether you agree with his politics or not he is a very good politician in that he was elected in difficult circumstances four times. He ran the country for 11 years.

He would bring diplomatic skills. He is used to running a board or a cabinet with diverse opinions. I think he would have brought to it a statesman-like approach, just a completely different breadth of experience from the other presidents that ICC has had in the past, many of whom have been very good at the job. I thought he was ideally suited.

MARK COLVIN: And the Zimbabwe sports minister was here last week and saying that he wanted normalisation between Australia and Zimbabwe, but clearly he was having a lot of difficulty with his own cricket council, or cricket board back home. Is normalisation, a thaw, now impossible?

MALCOLM SPEED: I think that’s a matter for Cricket Australia and we need to bear in mind that Zimbabwe is still a very troubled country. The sports minister there, Mr Coltart, I don’t know him but I hear good things about him. I think he is trying to solve some of the problems that cricket in Zimbabwe has faced but this won’t help.

MARK COLVIN: Malcolm Speed, former chief executive of the International Cricket Council.

Newsday

By Daniel Nhakaniso

June 29 2010

Khumalo Hockey Stadium will get a facelift after the Ministry of Education, Sport and Culture secured $1 million for its refurbishment ahead of the 2011 African Olympic qualifiers.

The Minister of Education, Sports and Culture David Coltart yesterday confirmed that his ministry had made a breakthrough after the Minister of Finance Tendai Biti agreed to provide $1,1 million to refurbish one stadium. “We have made a breakthrough in that the Minister of Finance has agreed to provide the funding needed to refurbish one stadium so that the country can host the Olympic qualifiers,” he said. “I am now in the process of finalising the arrangements with the Minister of Finance and soon I will be meeting with officials from the Hockey Association of Zimbabwe (HAZ) so that the disbursement of funds can start in preparation for the games next year,” said Coltart.

After the refurbishment of  Khumalo Hockey Stadium in Bulawayo, Magamba Stadium in Harare will also get a facelift. NewsDay is reliably informed that a South African contractor recently inspected the stadium to assess the kind of repairs that will be undertaken at the facility. The damage to the astro turf at the two venues has resulted in local players playing on grass when internationally, the sport is being played on astro turf. This has made local players to lag behind in terms of skills and techniques of the modern game. Coltart said having functional stadia would boost the popularity of the sport.

“Hockey is one of the major sports in the country and we have a lot of talented players but we have been losing most of them to neighbouring countries.

“All that should be a thing of the past if Khumalo and Magamba are hosting matches again,” said Coltart.

Herald

28 June 2010

By Felex Share
PROSPECTS that the Zimbabwe School Examinations Council could allow more than 110 000 disadvantaged candidates to sit for their November examinations look hazy as it emerged that it is owed nearly US$5 million in unpaid fees.

Government last year allowed students to sit for the examinations without paying fees on the understanding that that these would be paid at a later date.

Last week, Education, Sport, Arts and Culture Minister David Coltart announced that the Government would release US$1,8 million for needy candidates under the Basic Education Assistance Model.

However, sources at Zimsec last week indicated that the examination council was still owed money from last year.

“We have been battling to get the money owed from last year and Zimsec has written twice to Government with little joy,” the source said.

Minister Coltart acknowledged the debt in an interview last Friday and said he was waiting for Treasury to release the money while Minister Biti said his office could only allocate budget finances to Zimsec and not for pupils.

Thousands of candidates failed to register for last year’s November Ordinary and Advanced Level public examinations owing to exorbitant fees.

However, to date, nothing has been paid to the examinations body.

The State said it would help poor candidates pay for six subjects for O-Level and four subjects for A-Level, including General Paper.

In addition, Government said it would pay for those who had registered for less than six subjects.

Confirming the debt, Minister Coltart said Treasury committed itself to paying for the disadvantaged pupils.

“On the issue of the money owed to Zimsec, I can only say they (Zimsec) have written to me in the past on the matter but it is the responsibility of the Treasury to release the money to them not the education ministry.

“At the moment, I am not aware of the current position but I would appropriately comment after consulting Mr Ndanga (Zimsec director) and officials from the Finance Ministry next week,” he said.

However, Minister Biti argued that examination issues were the responsibility of the Education Ministry.

He said his ministry’s duty was “only” to allocate the examination body money in the National Budget not to pay for students’ examination fees.

“As far as I am concerned we do not owe them (Zimsec) anything and the education minister is the ideal man to talk

“We only allocate them money in the National Budget and anything to do with education is the sole responsibility of the parent ministry,” he said.

However, it could not be established how many from the 187 000 O-Level candidates and 23 000 A-Level pupils — who registered for exams last year — should have had their fees covered by Government.

Zimsec director Mr Happy Ndanga on Friday admitted that Government owed them money.

“Government does not owe us money in the general sense of a lender and borrower but intervenes in cases of hardships.

“Government pays examination fees for hardship cases that have been identified at the school and vetted by the Community Selection Committee. There has never been strenuous efforts to make them pay,” he said.

However, a senior Zimsec staffer in the finance department said the examination body had written to the ministries of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture and Finance twice on the matter with no favourable results.

He said the unpaid debts were affecting operations at the institution and would cripple the examination body if not paid again this year.

“Government is our sole financier and we normally get our money from the money paid by the candidates. They promised to pay us through the Finance Ministry but it seems we will never get anything. If Government continues offering the examinations for free then it will be disastrous on our part.

“We need money to print question papers, purchase exam materials, for distribution, paying markers among other things and how does Government think we are coping?

“We must be clear in the way we operate because in the end the blame is always heaped on Zimsec yet they (Government) will have contributed immensely to the crisis,” said the official.

Government, through the Ministry of Labour and Social Services’ Enhanced Social Protection Project, intervenes in cases of hardships.

One of these interventions includes Beam where Government pays examination fees for disadvantaged pupils identified by the schools.

Herald

28 June 2010

By Mukanya Makwira

THE separation of politics and sport is an issue held in sanctity by the majority of sports federations the world over.

Fifa, the world soccer governing body, even discourages any displays, adverts, messages or material with political undertones. The reason for this is because of the unifying power of sport.

It is desperation, however, that drives a man to look for help from a wounded lion’s den. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard sneaked into the country last week to solicit support from Zimbabwe Cricket.

Yes, John Howard was here, in the very country he said was politically unstable that his country’s cricketers could not come to, to solicit the country’s support in his bid to land the post of president of the International Cricket Council (ICC).

Zimbabwe Cricket has over the last decade endured a tumultuous period at the hands of some Western countries, who decided to cross the sport Rubicon and muddied the good game of cricket with politics, all in the name of regime change.

In the process, the sport suffered from the politics of racism as the majority of white cricketers left the country to play overseas, mainly for low division teams, in an effort to spruce up the propaganda effort of the West.

Amongst those trying to achieve political means through sport was John Howard, who ironically is trying to convince Zimbabwe to bring his rot, right into the corridors of the ICC.

Now hear this. “My personal wish is to see Zimbabwe fully reintegrated into the world cricket family and see the sport continue to grow in all parts of the world, including Zimbabwe,” said Howard. How ironic!

Cricket and world sport in general does not need the likes of Howard, lest the sport be drawn into the gutters. He, of all people, cannot talk of developing a sport, which he has done so much to destroy for political ends.

He is a wolf in sheepskin, with the sole aim of returning the sport to the dark ages where it was a preserve of the Anglo-Saxon countries and using it to settle political scores. He has nothing to offer to sport, which spreads a message of unity, against his racist thoughts.

That he came to Zimbabwe was a surprise on its own. Wasn’t he the same person who went out of his way to block his country’s cricketers from touring Zimbabwe in 2007 saying that the country was not safe?

So determined was he that his government offered to pay the US$2 million fine to ICC, in order to make sure that the tour was cancelled. So Zimbabwe is safe for him when he wants to satisfy his personal ambitions and not for his fellow countrymen? What a shame!

In a bid to free sport of all ills, virtually all sports associations have incorporated the “Kick Out Racism” campaign. It is therefore a surprise that cricket is trying to put in its highest echelons a renowned racist.

For what purpose, one might ask?

Howard has excess baggage, a point so amplified by the South Africa Cricket president Methuseli Nyoka and the majority of the directors of other cricket associations around the world.

The support from the likes of English and New Zealand cricket associations just smacks of arrogance and reveals their quest to politicise sport.

Howard was a fervent supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa. He also superintended over racist laws in Australia, which discriminated against the indigenous aborigines.

It took the man who replaced him, Kevin Rudd, to repeal the racist legislation, some of which were passed under his watch. Why is the ICC going to where other sporting disciplines are trying very hard to come from? Do they think a leopard can shed its spots? Never!

True to his racial orientation, Howard tried to clandestinely use the Minister of Education, Sport, Arts and Culture, Senator David Coltart, to penetrate the corridors of Zimbabwe Cricket.

Was it mere coincidence that the minister was at the airport at the same time Howard arrived? That both of them were whisked to the Australian ambassador’s residence for “dinner”, minus the cricket officials he had come to see adds further intrigue to his intentions.

Does he think that Zimbabweans have a short memory? His liberal-national coalition government was responsible for imposing the ruinous illegal sanctions, working in cahoots with the British and Americans. Today he asks for our help. What a shame! Should the country help such people? Let him fight his dirty war.

Howard’s visit now explains the “gesture” by Australian Cricket, inviting the Zimbabwean team to tour the country in 2011, for reasons, which were not clear up to now.

The cat is now out of the bag. They think that cricket bosses can be bought for two pieces of silver? What has changed now? Just because they want to use us to vote for their man they think they could give us a sweetener?

Allowing bigoted politicians to sneak into the sporting world is the worst thing that can happen to sport.

History will judge all those who assist those who want to politicise sport harshly. Posterity will not be kind to them. Such kinds of people are a nuisance to sport. They would seek to use politics to further their political agendas.