England-Afghanistan boycott calls: ECB want ICC-wide approach to Champions Trophy issue

The England and Wales Cricket Board has known as for a unified response to motion in opposition to Afghanistan amid requires the England males’s staff to boycott subsequent month’s Champions Trophy match between the perimeters.

England are resulting from face Afghanistan in Lahore on 26 February, however UK politicians need the staff to refuse to play the 50-over match and take a stand in opposition to the Taliban regime’s assault on ladies’s rights.

A letter to the ECB, written by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, and signed by the likes of Reform UK chief Nigel Farage, and former Labour leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Lord Kinnock, urged England to boycott the match to “ship a transparent sign” that “such grotesque abuses is not going to be tolerated”.

Girls’s participation in sport has successfully been outlawed for the reason that Taliban’s return to energy in 2021 and plenty of of Afghanistan’s feminine gamers left the nation for their very own security.

Worldwide Cricket Council (ICC) rules state full membership is conditional upon having ladies’s cricket groups and pathway constructions in place.

Nevertheless, Afghanistan’s males’s staff have been allowed to take part in ICC tournaments seemingly with none sanctions.

In response to the letter signed by group of greater than 160 politicians calling for a boycott, ECB chief government Richard Gould stated the governing physique “is dedicated to discovering an answer” which “upholds the rights of girls and women in Afghanistan”.

“Whereas there has not been a consensus on additional worldwide motion throughout the ICC, the ECB will proceed to actively advocate for such measures,” he stated.

“A coordinated, ICC-wide method could be considerably extra impactful than unilateral actions by particular person members.”

Gould stated the ECB will proceed its coverage of not scheduling bilateral matches in opposition to Afghanistan however didn’t commit both method to a boycott.

He added that the ECB will have interaction with the UK authorities, different worldwide boards and the ICC to “discover all attainable avenues for significant change” however acknowledged there have been “various views” on the difficulty.

“We perceive the issues raised by those that consider {that a} boycott of males’s cricket might inadvertently assist the Taliban’s efforts to suppress freedoms and isolate Afghan society,” Gould added.

“It is essential to recognise the significance of cricket as a supply of hope and positivity for a lot of Afghans, together with these displaced from the nation.”

The Division for Tradition, Media and Sport (DCMS) is in touch with the ECB over the broader difficulty of the Afghanistan ladies’s cricket staff.

“We’re deeply involved by the appalling erosion of girls’s and women’ rights in Afghanistan,” a DCMS spokesperson stated.

“We welcome the truth that the ECB are making representations to the ICC on this wider difficulty and what assist will be given.”

The Afghanistan ladies’s staff was created in 2010, 9 years after the Taliban regime fell by the hands of a US-led navy coalition.

The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) initially barred the ladies’s staff from taking part in at a number of worldwide tournaments, saying it obtained “Taliban threats”.

Twenty-five feminine cricketers had been handed contracts by the ACB in 2020. Lower than a yr later the Taliban returned to energy, ending any progress in direction of Afghanistan taking part in an official ladies’s worldwide.

Greater than 20 Afghan ladies’s cricketers managed to go away the nation and are at present residing in Australia.

England have performed Afghanistan thrice in one-day internationals and T20 internationals – all at ICC occasions – and misplaced their most up-to-date assembly on the 2023 50-over World Cup.

Pakistan and impartial venue Dubai will host the eight-team Champions Trophy from 19 February to 9 March. Australia and South Africa be a part of England and Afghanistan in Group B, whereas Pakistan, India, New Zealand and Bangladesh meet in Group A.