Apathy follows anarchy

14 April 2012

After all the dramas, rows and agonising in Johannesburg and amid a sea of dismay back home, England's cricketers were set to step off the plane in Harare today to be presented with the ultimate irony about the trip they never wanted to make. That is, Zimbabwe couldn't care a hoot about their presence anyway.

"Will there be a whole lot of people here either to make a fuss of them or boo and hiss at them at their hotel?" Ray Gripper pondered down the phone line from Harare. "No, I don't think there'll be anything. Why? Because the tour is seen here as a total non-event. Everybody is sick and tired of this whole thing and I can't see anybody being bothered to either welcome England or try to discredit them."

There was resignation in the voice of this grand old man of Zimbabwean cricket, who has represented his country for nigh on half a century from its Rhodesia days as record-breaking batsman, captain, selector and administrator. He's never willingly missed an international match at his local Harare Sports Club but this weekend, when the first one-day game is due to take place, he's vowed to be elsewhere.

This is not because he believes England should have boycotted the trip, though he understands why many in Zimbabwe believe "that they shouldn't be here, that they're weak for not making a stand and that English cricket is just mercenary". No, for him and his friends, it is more a silent protest against what they see as the strangling of Zimbabwean cricket by its administration.

When Gripper predicts that protests won't be seen at the five one-day internationals "because you have to understand how brutal the authorities are in crushing any sort of demonstration", it is obvious that an old farmer accepts there are bigger issues at stake here than a mere game.

Still, cricket has been his love for so long, he makes no apologies about his desperation to see it survive and he actually believes that, perversely, England's visit will help that cause even though he's forced to wonder who exactly will want to watch the tourists' second XI ag ainst Zimbabwe's novice third XI.

"I believe the Sports Club will be half-empty. It's capable of holding about 8,000 but I think they wouldn't get more than 3,000.

People won't want to go but the Zimb abwe C r icke t Union will try and fill it with kids, bussing them in to try to make the situation look better for the cameras," he said.

"The guys I used to play with who've been given tickets for the game just won't go now. It's their way of registering their protest against the current ZCU administration.

"There's indifference towards cricket in general at the moment because of the ZCU and their racist attitudes which, despite what the ICC said in their inquiry report, everyone here recognises as the policies which are killing the game."

They are also the policies which Gripper's son Trevor has been protesting about as one of the white "rebel" strikers who now look as if they'll probably never play Test cricket for Zimbabwe again after taking on the

ZCU. "I gather that for Trevor to be considered again for the team, he'd have to denounce all allegat ions of racism (against the ZCU) and apologise and he's not prepared to do that because he thought he was making a stand for what was right," said Gripper, who had tried unsuccessfully to broker some agreement between the warring parties.

Now, it seems a hopeless quest to him. At 66, he's fearless enough and weary enough not to worry about being considered "persona non grata" by the Mugabe-backed ZCU so he'll say what he really thinks of them - in short, that they're a small, selfelected, self-perpetuating group of "money-grabbers only in the game for what they can get out of it".

Gripper prefaces his comments with "my personal opinion" because everybody has a different one in Zimbabwe, ranging from Andy Flower claiming England needed to come to keep the country's plight in the spotlight to the Archbishop of Bulawayo's protestation that they had to stay away so as not to be Mugabe's propaganda tool.

Yet one suspects that everyone may end up sharing Gripper's opinion about sheer indifference taking hold. "Once, this would have been the highlight of our sporting year here, a sellout," he mused.

Only now, though, it looks set to be an exercise which no one could have their heart in.

Not the unhappy tourists, not the boycotting rebels, not the home side on a hiding to nothing, not fearful protesters, not supporters sniffing a mismatch and surely not a population more preoccupied with where the next meal is coming from.

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Apathy follows anarchy

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