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Cricket
By Malcolm Conn
As Australia was preparing for the opening match in a seven-game series, the Australian Cricket Board told its players that the tour of Zimbabwe would go ahead just a day after the country had been suspended from the Commonwealth for un-free and unfair presidential elections. This is of no consequence to international cricketers, who spend much of their touring lives in some of the world's least safest cities, and Johannesburg is amongst them. But given the unsettled state of a country that can no longer feed itself, new one-day captain Ricky Ponting expressed an understandable apprehension on behalf of his team- mates. ``I think everyone has a few concerns about Zimbabwe at the moment,'' a typically straightforward Ponting said as he prepared to take a revamped one-day team, minus the Waugh brothers, towards next year's World Cup. ``The bottom line is we are being guided by the ACB which is being guided by the experts in Zimbabwe, so it really is in their hands. They have made it really clear to us if there are player safety issues in Zimbabwe then we won't be going there.'' Australia is due to tour Zimbabwe next month for three one-day Internationals and two Tests. However, despite the seriousness of the situation, it has not been the immediate concern of the players. ``We have really just been getting over the Test series and obviously focussing on the one-day series,'' Ponting said. The Australians have been promised two low-key but armed security guards for the whole of the Zimbabwe tour but such security and more has been a way of life for teams touring the Indian subcontinent. "Sri Lanka has always probably been the worst one for us after the '96 World Cup. That's probably been the place where we had high security,'' Ponting said, which is a terrible shame given the beauty of the country. ``Otherwise India and Pakistan on our last few tours there have been good. We have had fairly tight security on us but there have been no scares. Those tours have gone pretty well.'' Given the success and status of Australia, there is a responsibility to promote the game as widely as possible and teams continued to tour Pakistan following a military coup. Ponting understands the team's role as ambassadors of the game but that cannot be an open-ended role. ``We love to play cricket over there,'' he said of Zimbabwe. ``We were able to go there and do whatever we wanted to do. We've been on safaris, and we've played golf and had a bit of a look around the place and I'm sure we'll be able to do those things again if it's safe.'' But the strangest thing for the Australians at the moment is getting used to life without the Waugh brothers after a decade and a half of dominance in the one-day game. ``It was a little bit sad to see those blokes go,'' Ponting said of the departure of Mark and Steve Waugh following the Test series. ``I have played all my career for Australia with both of those guys. It's no secret that Mark is one of my closest mates in the side and all of a sudden not be playing with him is a bit different.'' It is different because the Waugh brothers are now approaching 37 and Australia failed to make the one-day finals in Australia this summer. Even so the next generation, 20-year-olds Shane Watson, the Tasmanian all-rounder, and Nathan Hauritz, the Queensland off-spinner, are likely to be forced to wait for their chance. The teams: Australia (likely team): Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Ricky Ponting (captain), Damien Martyn, Darren Lehmann, Michael Bevan, Ian Harvey, Shane Warne, Brett Lee, Jason Gillespie and Glenn McGrath. South Africa (from): Shaun Pollock (captain), Nicky Boje, Mark Boucher, Boeta Dippenaar, Herschelle Gibbs, Andrew Hall, Jacques Kallis, Gary Kirsten, Lance Klusener, Makhaya Ntini, Jonty Rhodes and Roger Telemachus.
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