Is Muldoon back?

That was the question I asked when I saw the headline in the Dominion Post that “Key may stop Black Caps’ Zimbabwe tour”.

In fact not even Muldoon tried to stop a NZ team from travelling overseas.

But as I read the full article, I realised that it is not as bad as I thought. Basically NZ Cricket doesn’t want to tour Zimbabwe (understandably) but if they refuse they get fined massively by the ICC.

However if the Govt declares they are “ordering” the team not to tour, then they escape the ICC fine.

So I can understand that any such “order” would be to actually help NZ Cricket out. But nevertheless I think one needs to be very careful about the notion that the Government can order any private sporting body what to do.