JOHANNESBURG, Feb 5: The World Cup technical committee will decide on Thursday whether England’s match against Zimbabwe can be switched to South Africa, cricket’s world governing body said on Wednesday.

In the latest step in a row that has dogged preparations for the tournament, England’s cricket board officially requested on Tuesday that the Feb 13 game be moved from strife-torn Zimbabwe because of mounting concerns over security.

“The meeting of the Cricket World Cup technical committee, to consider the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) request to reschedule its match against Zimbabwe from Harare, will take place on Thursday afternoon (1430 GMT) in Cape Town,” the International Cricket Council (ICC) said in a statement.

The row blew up in December when British ministers urged the England team to boycott the match in protest at Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, who it accuses of rigging his re-election last year and compounding a food crisis by seizing white-owned farms.

English cricket chiefs initially resisted government pressure, but changed their mind after players expressed concerns over their own safety and asked for the match to be switched to South Africa, where most of the 54 matches will be played.

Should the request be rejected, England would forfeit the match, a move that would leave them with only a slim chance of reaching the next round.

Both England and Zimbabwe have the right to appeal against whatever the technical committee decides, through one of three judges from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Kenya.

The committee is made up of ICC chief executive Malcolm Speed, World Cup executive director Ali Bacher, ICC commercial manager Campbell Jamieson, ex-South African umpire Brian Basson, former India batsman Sunil Gavaskar and ex-West Indies pace bowler Michael Holding, whose whereabouts were unclear.

“We are trying to establish Michael Holding’s whereabouts at the moment, he’s not believed to be in South Africa,” ICC spokesman Brendan McClements said. “The committee has a quorum of four and it can make a majority decision.”

The ECB’s call to switch venues threatens to throw the tournament into turmoil, which could in turn undermine South Africa’s campaign to host the continent’s first Soccer World Cup in 2010.

New Zealand have already refused to play their Feb 21 match in Kenya’s capital Nairobi, due to safety concerns fuelled by a suicide bombing in November that killed 16 people in the coastal resort of Mombassa.

McClements said New Zealand had not applied to the technical committee to move their Nairobi fixture, indicating that the match would not be on Thursday’s agenda. New Zealand has said it may appeal to the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration in Sport.

Australia’s team have also expressed safety concerns over playing their Feb 24 match in Zimbabwe’s second city Bulawayo but said on Tuesday they would go ahead with the match, resisting renewed pressure from their own government to boycott.

Australia remain tournament favourites and would stand a better chance than England of getting through to the second round if they, too, forfeited points in Zimbabwe.

South African statesman and former President Nelson Mandela joined the fray on Wednesday, telling England and New Zealand they should play the matches as the ICC told them last week after security inspections of Zimbabwe and Kenya.

“If we refuse to follow what the international body says, we introduce chaos in cricket,” he told reporters in Johannesburg.

Britain and Australia’s leaders have led a campaign for sanctions against Mugabe in a row that has split the Commonwealth on roughly racial lines.—Reuters