A reporter working for Britain's Daily Telegraph is being thrown out of Zimbabwe a day after arriving to cover the Sri Lanka cricket series, a spokesman for the paper said on Tuesday.

"It is Mihir Bose who is a specialist writer on sports. He has been deported. He is packing now and will be catching an afternoon flight to Johannesburg," the spokesman said.

He said he did not know why Bose had been ordered out of the country, but added that Zimbabwean immigration officials were treating him politely.

Zimbabwe has a history of fraught relations with Britain, its former colonial master, and has imposed rigid curbs on the activities of foreign reporters in the country.

The chairman of the Zimbabwean Cricket Union is in London to try to persuade the English Cricket Board to go ahead with a tour to the former Rhodesia later this year, thrown into doubt by fears over security for the players.