Counties to back ECB tour decision.

England's counties are expected to resist pressure exerted by the Zimbabwe Cricket Union and will support the decision made by the England and Wales Cricket Board about England's proposed tour there later this year.

Reports claimed that ZCU chairman Peter Chingoka had intensified the pressure on his counterparts at Lord's by e-mailing all the county chief executives outlining why October's controversial tour should go ahead.

Chingoka's move comes just 24 hours before the Management Board of the ECB are due to a discuss a report written by board member Des Wilson, which set out a "framework for rational decision-making" on whether to tour troubled countries, and will make a final decision at a meeting of their Executive Board next month.

It was a strategy designed to unsettle the ECB, who have already taken advice from the Government and received a supportive letter from Foreign Secretary Jack Straw which claimed "the situation in Zimbabwe is bleak, and is deteriorating", but stopped short of ordering England not to go on the tour.

But instead of undermining the counties' support for the ECB, Chingoka's attempts appear to have had the opposite effect.

"The position is very straightforward," explained Mark Newton, Worcestershire's chief executive yesterday.

"The counties have allowed the Management Board to make that decision for us because we believe they are the best qualified to do that.

"I fail to see how sending an e-mail like this is going to help Zimbabwe cricket at all."

Chingoka's appeal to the counties was directed straight at their purse-strings after they were all forced into cutbacks as a result of England's withdrawal from last February's World Cup match in Harare, a decision which forced the International Cricket Council to withhold their share of the tournament profits.

"As beneficiaries of substantial ECB grants you and your colleagues must judge whether the risk of further major financial penalties is an acceptable consequence," claimed Chingoka in the e-mail.