England v Afghanistan should go ahead – culture secretary

England’s men’s cricket team should play against Afghanistan in the Champions Trophy, despite calls for a boycott in response to the Taliban regime’s assault on women’s rights, Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy says.

Since the Taliban’s 2021 resurrected, female sport participation has been effectively prohibited.

A cross-party letter, signed by nearly 200 UK politicians, has been sent to the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) calling for England to refuse to play in the Champions Trophy match in Lahore on 26 February.

However, Nandy told BBC Breakfast on Friday: “I do think it should go ahead.

” I am instinctively very cautious about boycotts in sport, partly because I think they are counterproductive.

“I believe they give sports fans the opportunities they crave, and they can very much penalize athletes and sportspeople who work extremely hard to achieve their goals without having the opportunity to compete.”

They are not the target of our condemnation of the Taliban’s heinous acts against women and girls.

According to the International Cricket Council (ICC) rules, having women’s cricket teams and pathway structures is required to be eligible for full membership.

However, Afghanistan’s men’s team have been allowed to participate in ICC tournaments seemingly without any sanctions.

Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, the author of the cross-party letter addressed to the ECB, directly questioned Sir Keir Starmer about the subject at the prime minister’s questions earlier this week.

The prime minister said the government was speaking with international counterparts about the issue and that “the suppression of freedom” “should be” condemned in the strongest terms.

Richard Gould, the ECB’s CEO, has called for a coordinated response to the action taken against Afghanistan. He has condemned the erosion of women’s rights.

The Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA) declined to comment on potential boycotts of individual England players, calling the situation “an extremely complex issue” while Cricket South Africa also called for “a unified and collective approach.”

Nandy argued that allowing the game to continue would highlight the problem, but that the UK shouldn’t be “rolling out the red carpet” at the event.

She said, “When China hosted the Winter Olympics, I was very vocal about making sure that we didn’t send dignitaries to that event, that we didn’t give them the PR coup they were looking for when they were forcibly incarcerating the Uyghur in Xinjian,” and I was very vocal about it.

“I am not at all relaxed about the situation in Afghanistan.

What are the best means of advancing those women and girls, the question is. The main channel is diplomacy, but there is also public pressure.