EAST Lancashire MPs Peter Pike and Lindsay Hoyle have urged Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to do more to prevent the English Cricket team touring Zimbabwe.

They raised the issue in the House of Commons after Blackburn MP Mr Straw met officials from the England and Wales Cricket Board to discuss the proposed tour.

With white members of the team in open dispute with the Zimbabwe cricket authorities and unlikely to play against England, there is growing pressure for the tour to be cancelled.

But the International Cricket Council has warned of huge fines and a possible ban from international cricket for the English team if it does not go.

Mr Straw told Burnley MP Mr Pike: "Our view is clear. We prefer the tour to be postponed until the situation in Zimbabwe improves, but the decision to tour is one for the cricketing authorities to take.

"The Government has no power to instruct people who play sport abroad not to leave this country. We do not have state run cricket in this country, nor should we.

"We have great sympathy for the position in which the England and Wales Cricket Board finds itself, having been presented by the International Cricket Council with a choice between touring and facing extremely serious financial penalties."

Mr Pike replied: "I recognise the position you have set out but you will acknowledge that the Labour Party never pussy-footed around taking sporting sanction against South Africa.

"That played a vital part in ending apartheid.

"Will you say to the cricket people that the tour should not take place, and say it loudly and clearly, because I believe that is what the overwhelming majority of MPs believes what we should be saying?"

Mr Straw replied: "What, sadly, has become all too clear is that there is no such consensus even within the ICC -- indeed far from it.

"It is that which places the England and Wales Cricket Board in this very difficult and untenable position."

Later in Foreign Office Questions, Chorley MP Mr Hoyle told Mr Straw: "I hear what you say, but do you not feel that the lives of cricketers will be put at risk if they were to tour Zimbabwe and that, on those grounds alone, we ought to send out a clear message: 'You are not to tour because of that risk?' "