JOHANNESBURG, Nov 25: England's five-match cricket tour of Zimbabwe will go ahead after a ban on 13 British journalists was rescinded. An England team spokesman said the players were booked on a flight to Harare from Johannesburg on Friday morning.

"We would expect the tour to go ahead," England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chairman David Morgan said on Thursday. England were originally due to fly on Wednesday but were ordered by the ECB to remain in South Africa. The team spokesman said Friday's opening one-day match would now be rescheduled.

"The ECB is committed to playing a five-match series," he said. "We will sort out the dates later." Morgan said he had been informed at a meeting with Zimbabwe cricket officials on Thursday that the bans had been lifted.

"The whole incident is regrettable but it has been resolved," he said. Major Anyway Mutambudzi, a senior official at the department of information and publicity, told Reuters the 13 barred reporters had been part of a backlog of applications which had now been cleared.

"The confusion came initially from the fact that people had applied as a group rather than as individuals as is required by our law. We have cleared everyone," he said.

Earlier, a spokesman for President Robert Mugabe said the reporters had been banned because they worked for organisations hostile to the Zimbabwe leader. "Bona fide media organisations in the UK have been cleared, but those that are political have not. This is a game of cricket, not politics," George Charamba said. -Reuters