THERE was a horrendous story from America last week, which the current England touring cricket team could relate to.

A woman was celebrating a particularly special birthday on board a river cruise in Chicago. As the vessel passed under a road bridge a rock band's tour bus was emptied of the contents of its toilet. The woman was drenched in a stench-deluge of...well, as the song says, you can guess the rest.

England's cricketers must feel similarly to that poor unfortunate woman, whose celebrations will be scarred forever by that river-boat trip.

The cricketers in the party that recently landed in Zimbabwe have been dealt the foulest end of the bat by almost all associated with them. When arrival in the capital Harare was delayed by an initial ban on journalists despatched to cover the tour, the perfect excuse for withdrawing totally from the ill-starred trip was at hand.

But rather than take the ban as a marker to return home, talks - smacking more of kow-towing desperation rather than inspiration - were held to get the media ban lifted. The shoddy show must go on it seems, and the fact England opened it with a workmanlike and incident-free victory does not banish the feeling that it should never have started in the first place.

Zimbabwe is in the grip of a tyranny that is killing and maiming a large number of its citizens besides bankrupting the nation's very economic infrastructure. President Robert Mugabe is a dictator who needs to be isolated from the world community, not be embraced, albeit unwillingly, under the cloak of a sporting contest.

The England and Wales Cricket Board and the International Cricket Council have hardly covered themselves in glory over this. Neither has the British Government, which again has pussy-footed around. All three bodies are complicit in allowing a murderous regime to take succour from a sporting encounter when it should be cast out of all involvement in international sport.

It does make you wonder what would have happened if good ol' Dubya Bush himself had been a cricket fan or if Zimbabwe had oil reserves from which to profit.

And don't counter that sport and politics should not be intertwined.

The two have always met ever since the English bow-men at Agincourt opted to show their two-fingered salute to their French adversaries.

You cannot divorce politics when a cricket tour is being played out amidst a backdrop of murder and mayhem. Never mind it's just not cricket - it's just not credible. The reek of hypocrisy is over-powering.

FROM sh...you-know-what to spit.

Senegal gob-meister El-Hadji Diouf has been up to his old tricks with his disgraceful projection of spittle into the face of Portsmouth captain Arjan de Zeeuw during Pompey's win over hosts Bolton.

Diouf, who has already been fined for a previous spitting offence against Celtic while playing for Liverpool, from where he is on loan to Bolton, is also the subject of a similar allegation by a Middlesbrough fan last month.

For his latest projectile of phlegm he has been fined two week's wages by Bolton and charged by the FA with improper conduct.

Witness then his union leader's wet response. Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professionals Footballers' Association said Diouf had 'not committed murder'.

True, Gordon. But Diouf's serial offences are killing the image of the game for any youngster eager to emulate the actions of the so-called Premiership performers. Spit the words out Gordon and condemn the spiteful Diouf.

Updated: 10:55 Tuesday, November 30, 2004