By Scott Heinrich

All players in this long-running saga have had time in the spotlight

The events surrounding England's on-off-on tour of Zimbabwe would not have looked out of place in Shakespeare's farcical Comedy of Errors.

In scenes reminiscent of last year's World Cup boycott, a final decision was late-coming as months of discourse gave way to a media ban which was then lifted.

There have been several key figures in the tragicomedy that has dragged the England and Wales Cricket board and its exhausted players through the hedge.

But what roles have they played, and how does the final outcome reflect on them?

The ECB should be commended for trying to steer its own course on Zimbabwe, 18 months after its lamentable show of passivity at the World Cup.

Rather than attempt to coerce the players to abandon their morals and security fears - as was the case in 2003 - the ECB said no player would be penalised for not taking part.

It was sensible rhetoric, giving the board breathing space to develop a strategy that they hoped would allow England to abandon the tour on moral grounds.

Enter Des Wilson, who as head of the ECB's marketing and communications division, prepared a document arguing the government's strong recommendation not to tour amounted to an instruction.

Such a reason is valid for cancelling a tour under the ICC's Future Tours Programme (FTP), and chairman David Morgan was set to take a clear mandate to the ICC saying an ECB vote had adopted Wilson's document as policy.

But the plan hit the buffers when, in a crucial move, ICC president Ehsan Mani persuaded Morgan to delay the vote, giving time to other member countries to propose that the FTP protocol become regulation.

It empowered the ICC to punish England if they cancelled the tour on moral grounds, and eventually led to the ECB going through with it.

In truth the ECB could not win either way, and with Wilson and chief executive Tim Lamb leaving it is still counting the cost.

Morgan tried unsuccessfully to get the government on side

Morgan has emerged with greater credit than he did after the World Cup, when he and Lamb left the final decision to the players.

As an advocate of the tour, Morgan attracted opposition and criticism from within cricket and outside the game.

But, privately dreading the tour, Morgan played a waiting game, and in the end it almost paid dividends with the media ban nearly derailing the one-day series.

Had Morgan voiced opposition, his views may have galvanised Zimbabwe and its government into not jeopardising the tour, leaving England facing bans and fines running into millions of pounds if they stayed away.

Nobody expected Robert Mugabe's government to lift its media ban, and although Morgan's threat to cancel the tour did not get England on the plane home he could still count the exchange as a victory.

The censure will not end for Morgan, but the impression is that he would prefer to be remembered as the chairman who led England to a troubled country than the one who led them to financial turmoil.

The most important thing to Mani was the tour going ahead

The ICC maintained all along that sport and politics do not mix, but the Zimbabwean government's media ban dropped politics into its lap.

It prompted Mani to express "a huge amount of sympathy" for the ECB, and even hint that the ban could have been a sufficient reason to call the tour off.

It was the closest the ICC came to delivering a clear stance on the issue, but Mani then said he would only "monitor" the situation.

Pilloried for not being more pro-active, but felt duty-bound to adhere to the FTP which its member nations had ratified earlier in the year.

Australia, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh had toured Zimbabwe in the recent months with no difficulties, and the ICC was reluctant to side with England for fear of creating a division.

Nobody was more pleased than Mani and his cohorts that the tour was finally given the go-ahead.

In a pre-emptive strike, chairman Peter Chingoka e-mailed the first-class county chief executives in January warning them England faced financial ruin if they did not tour.

ZC were insistent that the series went ahead after the 2003 tour of England, and got their way after the media ban was dropped.

Had the backing of the ICC - and several influential nations - all along, but again a team stripped of quality by the player crisis faces a hard time on the field.

It stuck to its guns in refusing to order the ECB not to travel, instead issuing a strongly worded recommendation not to.

But ongoing appeals for sanctions took no account of the ECB's relationship with the ICC, and no offers of financial compensation were forthcoming should a fine have been issued.

Former Sports Minister Kate Hoey condemned the Foreign Office for not doing more.

"This is actually about playing into the hands of Mugabe and it is shameful, deeply shameful the government is conniving with this," she said.

Michael Vaughan's men have been tossed around by bureaucracy like rag dolls in the months, and days, leading up to the tour.

Spending hours on end in a hotel is not the best preparation for any match, but in fairness they were given the chance to stay at home and were probably expecting the unexpected.

In the end, only frontline players Steve Harmison, Andrew Flintoff and Marcus Trescothick did not travel.