It is not too hard to discount official statistics relating toZimbabwe. The representatives of the International Cricket Council who recently visited the country and decided that all is well appear to have done just that.

That 75 per cent of the population of Zimbabwe is unemployed or that 80 per cent live below the poverty line is an internal problem, as is the annual inflation rate of 144 per cent. That life expectancy has fallen to 37 years is unfortunate. That basic commodities are so rare that beggars no longer seek money - it is effectively worthless - but scraps of food is regrettable. That 300 people a day are dying from AIDS and there are hardly enough workers left to bury all of them is worrying.

Rightly, ICC can point out that all countries have their problems, and if these were Zimbabwe's only ills then there would be every reason to support the hosting of the World Cup there, to boost the decimated economy. It should be stressed there is not, and has never been, any serious concerns over the safety of the players, although the Foreign Office "advise against independent travel".

But the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) predicts that in the next few months 6.7 million Zimbabweans - almost half the population - will need aid because of shortages of maize, bread, milk and sugar, in a country which should be one of Africa's most fertile. A recent opinion column in the Boston Globe best explains the situation.

"He [Mugabe] clings to power with undisguised brutality, rigging elections and arranging for opposition candidates to be kidnapped, beaten – even killed. He has made criticism of himself a crime and deploys squads of armed goons to terrorise his political foes. He is engaged in a campaign of naked ethnic cleansing, scapegoating racial minorities as "enemies of the state" and driving them from their land. His policies have shattered the economy, leaving more than half the work force unemployed. He uses food as a weapon so ruthlessly that in a country that was once a breadbasket to its neighbours, the spectre of mass starvation looms."

And yet ICC went to Zimbabwe, they apparently looked and listened, and then decided that while there were problems, none concerned them and the World Cup could go ahead. It has to be assumed that they did not meet, or were not allowed to meet, or didn't want to meet, representatives of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwe's remaining official opposition and a party, who most observers accept defeated Mugabe in March's discredited elections.

The MDC have repeatedly called on the world to stay away from the World Cup. "A boycott would send a clear message that the international community will not tolerate Mr Mugabe's illegitimate regime and would serve to further isolate him," Welshman Ncube, a leading official in the MDC, told the Guardian newspaper. "Given that millions of people are on the verge of starvation it is inappropriate that a major international sporting event should be held in this country."

But ICC prefer to shelter behind the tired old excuse that sport and politics should not mix. It has to be assumed that if the current leaders of ICC had been in place two or three decades ago they would have happily continued to encourage sides to travel to South Africa despite apartheid. The African National Congress says that sporting boycotts were one of the most effective actions against the apartheid regime, an opinion endorsed by many whose careers were directly curtailed by the action. To say that sport and politics operate on entirely separate planes is naivety at its worst. It is the stuff of apologists and people whose motives are based on the bottom line.

The England & Wales Cricket Board are firmly behind ICC (the lure of the income from the tournament is too much to resist), and even the British government appears to be ambivalent, although more MPs are coming out in favour of a boycott.

At the weekend Mugabe announced that he was considering nationalising five multinational oil companies in Zimbabwe, his response to the country's deepening fuel crisis. The seizure of assets of big businesses (the five includes BP, Shell and Mobil) might actually galvanise the government into action and that in turn would lead to a rethink at Lord's.

Perhaps the last word should go to Mugabe, who in his speech made a thinly-veilled threat against his enemies, of which Britain tops the list. "The more they work against us," he warned, "the more negative we shall become to their kith and kin here."

These are words that will send a chill through the blood of many remaining in Zimbabwe. But not, so it seems, the good men at the helm of ICC, ECB or the British government.

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