The first match in England's controversial tour of Zimbabwe has been rescheduled for Sunday, England team spokesman Andrew Walpole said on Friday.

The team are due to fly to Harare later on Friday after a ban on 13 British journalists, which threatened the tour, was rescinded on Thursday.

"The rest of the schedule should follow shortly," Walpole told journalists at Johannesburg Airport.

England had planned to fly out on Wednesday for the five-match tour with the first match originally scheduled for Friday, but were told by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to remain in South Africa.

ECB director of operations John Carr, who briefed the players on Thursday, said: "We are delighted the decision has been fully reversed."

He added: "The tour has to take place to fulfill England's commitment to the (International Cricket Council's) Future Tours Programme. The goalposts were moved when accreditation was denied but we are back to where we were now."

Major Anyway Mutambudzi, a senior official at the Zimbabwe department of information and publicity, told Reuters the 13 barred reporters had been part of a backlog of applications which had now been cleared.

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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.

Top strike bowler Steve Harmison boycotted the tour before the squad was announced and several players, including captain Michael Vaughan, aired reservations before the latest crisis.

Relations between Zimbabwe and its former colonial ruler Britain have hit rock bottom since Mugabe launched a campaign of chaotic and often violent seizures of land from white farmers, many of whom held dual British citizenship.