THE World Cup is just nine days away, yet the games of politics will continue, it seems, up to and probably beyond the time when the players take the field. The International Cricket Council clung doggedly to its “principles” yesterday, more doggedly than had been expected, and again refused to countenance the relocation of any of the controversial matches due to be played in Zimbabwe or Kenya.

We now await the moment when the New Zealand team officially announce the boycott of their game in Nairobi on February 23, though there is plenty of game time yet for the administrators to play with that fixture. With the Zimbabwe-England fixture so much closer — February 13 — the focus now returns to the ECB and how it will engineer a move out of Harare and into South Africa. The Professional Cricketers’ Association last night expressed “significant disappointment” at the latest development.

The ICC executive board met again by telephone conference call yesterday morning and, in the course of a two-hour meeting, David Morgan, the chairman of the ECB, again declined the opportunity to put England’s case to the vote. His decision was not, this time, a neglect of his responsibilities to his team, it was simply a case of saving his breath and a bit of face at the same time. Morgan had already seen quashed the New Zealand appeal to have their Kenya game moved, and the Kiwi argument, backed up by strong evidence of a terrorist threat to Westerners, was, by all accounts, the stronger.

Heath Mills, a New Zealand players’ representative, expects New Zealand to pull out of the Nairobi fixture. “The New Zealand Cricket board has always demonstrated that player safety is their priority. We’ve got great faith in them to follow through,” he said.

“We’ve had our own security adviser’s assessment and you can’t get more accurate than the US Embassy on the ground in Nairobi. The US Embassy has advised its citizens to leave and is on high-critical alert, the highest state of alert,” Mills said.

The rejection of New Zealand was the most surprising news to come from the board meeting, though nor did anyone quite expect the Australian representative to vote against his Antipodean neighbour. You need seven out of ten votes to win an appeal like this; Sir John Anderson, putting the case for New Zealand, got just two — his own and Morgan’s — with Holland abstaining.

“Thanks be to God,” was the reaction of Jimmy Rayani, the chairman of the Kenyan Cricket Association. “The whole matter had been blown out of all proportion.”

Morgan did not remain completely silent. He took the opportunity to counsel the board on the theme of collective responsibility. “If there are significant security and safety problems,” he said, “it will blight the whole 2003 World Cup with an indelible stain. It will reflect very badly on cricket and, indeed, everyone associated with the World Cup. No one will escape blame. We will all have to bear the collective responsibility.”

It may be of some relief to the England and New Zealand players that the reason the ICC executive remained so inflexible yesterday was because the report from Kroll, the international security risk consultant, advised it that security plans in place in both Zimbabwe and Kenya were sufficient to ensure the protection of the players.

With the steady flow of evidence to the contrary, the justification of the ICC’s position in yesterday’s press conference drew the sort of despairing but genuine questions that are now commonplace: “Have you got an assurance that the police will not start shooting people in the crowd?” and “Do you have a comprehensive evacuation plan in place if it all goes pear-shaped?”

The answers were yes and yes, delivered by the everunflappable Malcolm Speed, the ICC chief executive. Speed also said that the ICC was inviting the concerned teams to send representatives to meet the World Cup security directorate in South Africa. “We would like to sit down with these countries and have our experts work through their issues,” he said.

However, given that the issues declared by Nasser Hussain and the England team concern morality as well as security, they must continue to press for the relocation of their Harare game. Their hopes now rest with the new decision-making body, the six-man World Cup technical committee, which takes control of the event on Sunday.

The committee will surely be asked by the ECB to review the decision on Harare as soon as it opens for business. New Zealand’s board may lodge a similar request, though it may wait to see how England fare.

The technical committee’s decisions would be made independently, Speed said. “New hearing, new people.”

New answers? If not, there will be acrimony to follow. The Kiwis will almost certainly boycott their one game. Will England call the boycott first?

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