Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, has known as on the ICC to “ship on their very own guidelines” in terms of girls’s rights in Afghanistan*, as he weighed into the row over England’s scheduled Champions Trophy conflict with the nation’s cricketers subsequent month.
England are resulting from face Afghanistan in Lahore on February 26 of their second match of the match, and the ECB is below stress to take motion after receiving a letter from the Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, signed by a cross-party group of greater than 160 politicians, together with Jeremy Corbyn, Lord Kinnock and Nigel Farage.
“We strongly urge the England males’s workforce gamers and officers to talk out in opposition to the horrific therapy of girls and women in Afghanistan below the Taliban,” the letter, addressed to Richard Gould, the ECB’s chief government, continued.
“We additionally urge the ECB to contemplate a boycott of the upcoming match in opposition to Afghanistan … to ship a transparent sign that such grotesque abuses won’t be tolerated. We should stand in opposition to intercourse apartheid and we implore the ECB to ship a agency message of solidarity and hope to Afghan girls and women that their struggling has not been missed.”
Responding to the letter, Gould rejected requires a boycott, saying that the Taliban regime’s clampdown on girls’s rights is a matter that requires a “co-ordinated, ICC-led, response” reasonably than unilateral motion from particular person international locations.
That stance has now obtained assist from Downing Road.
“The ICC ought to clearly ship on their very own guidelines and be sure that they’re supporting girls’s cricket because the ECB do,” the prime minister’s spokesman stated. “That is why we assist the truth that the ECB are making representations to the ICC on this difficulty.
“The erosion of girls’s and women’ rights by the Taliban is clearly appalling. We’ll work with the ECB on this difficulty, we’re in touch with them. In the end this can be a matter for the ICC in relation to the Champions Trophy.”
The state of affairs echoes the dilemma that England’s cricketers confronted on the 2003 World Cup, when Nasser Hussain’s workforce had been urged to boycott their group-stage match with Zimbabwe, then led by Robert Mugabe – a call that was in the end left to the gamers, and resulted in a factors forfeiture that scuppered their qualification for the match’s latter phases.
Gould’s response to Antoniazzi confirmed that the ECB has no intention of participating in a bilateral collection with Afghanistan whereas the Taliban regime is in energy, however insisted that their participation at ICC occasions was a matter for the governing physique as a complete, and never for particular person members.
“The ECB strongly condemns the therapy of girls and women in Afghanistan below the Taliban regime,” Gould wrote. “The ICC structure mandates that each one member nations are dedicated to the expansion and growth of girls’s cricket. Consistent with this dedication, the ECB has maintained its place of not scheduling any bilateral cricket matches in opposition to Afghanistan,” he continued.
“Whereas there has not been a consensus on additional worldwide motion inside the ICC, the ECB will proceed to actively advocate for such measures. A coordinated, ICC-wide strategy can be considerably extra impactful than unilateral actions by particular person members.
“We acknowledge and respect the various views on this world difficulty,” Gould added. “We perceive the considerations raised by those that consider a boycott of males’s cricket might inadvertently assist the Taliban’s efforts to suppress freedoms and isolate Afghan society.
“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 ECB is dedicated to discovering an answer that upholds the rights of girls and women in Afghanistan whereas additionally contemplating the broader influence on the Afghan folks.
“We’ll proceed to have interaction in constructive dialogue with the UK authorities, different stakeholders, the ICC, and different worldwide cricket boards to discover all attainable avenues for significant change.”
*1900 GMT – This story was up to date with Starmer’s response
