IT MUST be considered the most courageous gesture in the history of sport. Yesterday, Andrew Flower and Henry Olonga took the field for Zimbabwe in their opening World Cup match against Namibia each wearing a black armband. “We are mourning the death of democracy in our beloved Zimbabwe,” they said in a joint statement.

Flower, a former Zimbabwe captain and a genuinely great batsman, was once rated No 1 in the world. Olonga, a fast bowler, was the first black African to represent Zimbabwe. Flower is also a wicketkeeper, Olonga an opera singer.

As the row about World Cup matches in Zimbabwe continues — and, unbelievably in England’s case, continues undecided — these two senior players have behaved in a sane, sensible, logical and courageous fashion, in dramatic contrast to the administrators of both English and world cricket.

“We cannot in good conscience take the field and ignore the fact that millions of our compatriots are starving, unemployed and oppressed,” said the most telling sentence of their soberly phrased — the more damning for that — condemnation of President Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

It is a simple document, and its timing is shattering to Mr Mugabe. Tyrants love big sporting events. Examples include Adolf Hitler, the Argentine military dictatorship and the Soviet empire. A sporting event is a public relations coup that conveys the message to all, at home and abroad, that everything is All Right, that the country in question is Doing Well.

Mr Mugabe was looking forward to this World Cup. It was going to show everybody that Zimbabwe was Just Fine. There can’t be anything wrong with a country that can hold big-time cricket matches, can there? But, in a moment of simple sincerity and bravery, of the sort that is beyond most politicians, two cricketers turned all this on its head. Zimbabwe’s participation in the World Cup now tells the world that Zimbabwe is not so much All Right as All Wrong. Every run scored, every wicket taken, is now a blow against Mr Mugabe. The tyrant’s weapons have been turned against him.

The only similar event in sporting history is the Black Power protest on the medal podium of the Olympic Games of 1968, in which the US sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos showed their reservations about the country they were representing with clenched fist salutes. Their immediate reward was ostracism from their sport.

There is already talk of banning Olonga from his club, Takashinga, but that is the least of his worries. To take public opposition to a tyrant in your own land is to invite revenge of a terrible and wide-ranging kind. So Flower and Olonga played the games of their lives for Zimbabwe. Should you care, they also beat Namibia in a rain-affected match.

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