Can sport and politics mix?

NEXT Monday, the Government will host a Downing Street reception to bask in the glory of Britain's Olympic and Paralympic heroes. With scenes of Athenian glory still fresh in the memory, and attempts to win the Olympic Games for London gathering pace, the country's leading politicians will embrace the sporting fraternity with open arms.

A smile for the cameras, a quick chat over coffee and, as far as Tony Blair is concerned, incontrovertible evidence that sport and politics need not exist in isolation.

According to the Prime Minister, this Government understands the unique role that sport plays in British culture and hopes to use sporting pursuits as a means of improving Britain's social and physical infrastructure and its relationship with other countries.

All very cosy. But later today, England's cricketers will discover that, while the politicisation of sport is all very well when there are pleasant photo opportunities to be had, it is not something that the Government signs up to unreservedly.

When Michael Vaughan leads the rest of his team-mates onto the tarmac in Zimbabwe, he will be doing so because, on this occasion, Blair and the rest of the British Cabinet have decided that sport and politics should not mix at all.

We have been here before of course. Last February, England refused to play a World Cup match against Zimbabwe, citing "safety and security concerns" as their rationale for refusing to travel to the capital Harare.

That avenue has been closed this year - a recent England and Wales Cricket Board delegation ruled that Zimbabwe was a "safe environment" in which to play - so the only way for English cricket to avoid expulsion from the Test arena, and a £1m fine, was for the Government to instruct the team not to travel.

If ever there was a time for politicians to enter the sporting arena, this was it. But, instead, England's cricketers have been subjected to procrastination and posturing, with the British Government refusing to take the kind of positive stance that should have accompanied their much-trumpeted "ethical foreign policy".

"Obviously they've (the ECB) had advice from the Government that we don't think it's to the benefit of cricket to tour," said sports minister, Richard Caborn. "But at the end of the day, it's a decision for the governing body to make."

In other words, we don't want you to go there, but we're not prepared to foot the bill if you don't. In England, it seems, sport and politics can be kept at arm's length.

In Zimbabwe, however, they can't. President and despot Robert Mugabe is the patron of the Zimbabwe Cricket Union (ZCU) and ECB chairman David Morgan has already admitted that he does not have a clue how he should act if the pair come face-to-face later this week.

Leading players Andy Flower and Henry Olonga were hounded out of the country after they wore black armbands during Zimbabwe's opening World Cup game to protest against the "death of democracy" in the country.

And, when England play their opening one-day international against Zimbabwe on Friday, they will do so against a weakened side because of the ZCU's selection policy that was introduced at the same time as Mugabe's controversial land seizures from white farmers.

The policy has led to 15 white players being axed from the squad and, while the International Cricket Council recently shocked the world by ruling that Zimbabwean cricket is not racist, even the game's governing body accepted most of former captain Heath Streak's accusations of a politically-motivated policy.

England's players will see the result of that policy when they face their Zimbabwean counterparts in five one-day games. But, with Mugabe desperate to use the tour to generate positive PR, they will be shielded from the effects of some of his other rulings. And, by banning reporters from media outlets including The Sun, The Times and the BBC, Mugabe has also enured tht it will not just be England's cricketers who are unable to witness the realities of life under his regime.

Two of England's games will be played at Bulawayo's lush Queens Club and, when travelling from their equally opulent hotel, the players will pass largely deserted streets framed by flowering bougainvillea.

Two miles north though, in the Emganwini township, life's daily toil will go on as leather thuds against willow.

Here, widespread malnutrition and endemic HIV infection have combined to produce an average life expectancy of 38.

Last year, half of Zimbabwe's population of 12m people needed food aid and, this year, unemployment has topped 70 per cent.

Last weekend, an independent church study group found that more than 3.4m people have fled the country in an attempt to escape Mugabe's political repression and Zimbabwe's economic disaster.

Most of the emigrants are the productive young males who should be driving the economy forward -- in their place, they have left the young and the old, powerless to prevent the country slipping into an even graver humanitarian crisis.

This is the environment into which the England team has strayed. Not because they want to, but because political inaction has left them with no other option.

Former England captain Mike Gatting knows all about playing sport despite a distasteful regime after leading a rebel tour to South Africa in 1990, while the country was still under the grip of apartheid.

But even he would have found it very difficult to be part of the travelling party that will touch down in Harare today.

"This one-day series should not be taking place," said Gatting. "That may sound hypocritical, but the circumstances are very different.

"When I signed up for that 'rebel tour' it was in the knowledge that change was already under way in South Africa. We were told that laws enforcing discrimination were coming off the statute books and that Nelson Mandela would soon be released.

"There has to be a very serious dilemma about representing your country on the cricket field in a land where people are suffering so much at the hands of their government."

The briefest flick through the history books will show that sport has helped to force political change in the past. The warring Greeks came together at the Ancient Olympics, Tommie Smith and John Carlos empowered a generation of black Americans with their 'Black Power' salute in Mexico City, while the drive for Korean unity was given a major boost when athletes from the north and south of the country marched under a Korean Unification flag in Athens this summer.

The British Government was quick enough to comment on Spanish society after racism blighted last week's football friendly in Madrid but, when presented with an opportunity to make a meaningful statement about Zimbabwe, they have disappeared into the shadows.

It is safe to assume they will return to the limelight on numerous occasions in the next six months in an attempt to win the 2012 Olympics for London.

If they are successful, the worlds of sport and politics will intertwine as never before. Or at least they will until the next time it becomes politically inconvenient for the Government to take a stand.