If I were asked to state my religion, I'd be tempted to answer "Cricket".

My spirits always rise in English Maytime in the knowledge that there are whole months ahead when this most glorious and unpredictable of all games will be played throughout the land.

But this year I'm not doing cartwheels of joy. My heart sank when it was revealed that Zimbabwe's England tour was to go ahead for it gives help and comfort to Robert Mugabe, one of the vilest of tyrants ever to rule even in that dark continent.

Mugabe runs a police state in which he tortures and kills his political opponents. I'm old enough to remember the shambolic and disgraceful deal which the British government did to bring Mugabe to power back in 1979. Lord Carrington promised at the time that, under Mugabe, the people of Zimbabwe would enjoy democratic freedoms. But it was not long before he set up his one-party state. In the 34 years since, he has managed to bankrupt, corrupt and ruin one of the most beautiful and fertile countries in the world.

Recently he turned his spite on the white farmers and illegally dispossessed them. Any resistance to this piracy was savagely put down. I can still see the battered and scarred body of the old woman who was beaten to within an inch of her life by Mugabe's sadistic thugs. And she was only one of many thousands of victims. For God's sake what are we doing playing cricket matches against Mugabe's regime when we ought to be sending troops in to depose him?

Forty years ago we refused to play against cricketers from racist South Africa; and this policy, by general agreement, was a contributory factor towards the ending of the apartheid regime. If it was right to ban the racist South African regime's representatives, why is it now deemed perfectly acceptable to welcome cricketers from the equally racist Zimbabwe? We are left to conclude that some sort of selective prejudice is operating here.

Back in the 1960s our cricketing authorities took a brave and sacrificial stand against racism. As a result the British public was for years denied the opportunity to watch some of the finest cricketers ever to play the game. Millions of pounds were lost in revenue. Nevertheless the ban was right because it was principled. But what do our cricket bosses today know about principle? The chief executive of the English Cricket Board was interviewed on the Today Programme last week on the first day of the Lord's Test. He said it was not for him - or members of the English team, for that matter - "to get involved in political judgements." He said that our boys have a right to pursue their lawful business of earning their living by playing cricket.

The Labour government of the 1960s supported that principled stand against racism. What does our usually so self-righteous Labour Government have to say? Nothing.

"English cricketers should be allowed to pursue their lawful business of earning their living by playing the game"? But I keep seeing the television and newspaper images of that old lady clubbed to within an inch of her life.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.