Sydney: The Australian government hardened its stand on Monday against a scheduled cricket tour of troubled Zimbabwe and said it would try to avoid huge fines for breach of contract.

The world champions are due to play three one-day Internationals in September, but foreign minister Alexander Downer made it clear the government wanted to scrap the tour. “I don’t want them to tour Zimbabwe,” he said. “I think that is the wrong look.”

CA had a contract through the International Cricket Council to play in Zimbabwe and could face fines of up to $1.6 million if it did not fulfil its commitments, Downer said.

“We’ll sit down with CA when they get back and we’ll go into all that sort of detail about what the contract says” he said. “Just simply to breach the contract, that could be expensive but there may be other ways around it.”

Downer said the cancellation of the tour would not hurt Mugabe’s regime, “in the sense that a lot of them are not interested in or enthusiastic about cricket.”

But, he said, “the whole concept of the world’s greatest cricket team and the biggest names in world cricket visiting Zimbabwe and giving a blessing to that country is one I feel uncomfortable with.”