Downing Road has referred to as on the Worldwide Cricket Council to “ship on their very own guidelines” because the England staff resists strain to boycott their forthcoming match towards Afghanistan.
A cross-party group of over 160 MPs and friends have signed a letter urging the England and Wales Cricket Board to take a seat out subsequent month’s fixture on the Champions Trophy in Lahore as an ethical objection to the Taliban regime’s ongoing assault on ladies’s rights within the nation.
ECB chief govt Richard Gould responded by saying he would “actively advocate” collective motion somewhat than take a unilateral stand by forfeiting the sport.
That stance has now obtained political backing from Quantity 10, with Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s official spokesman suggesting the onus remained with the game’s governing physique.
The phrases of ICC membership have been straight breached by the abolition of girls’s sport in Afghanistan, grounds for doable suspension, however their males’s have now been permitted to take a spot in three international tournaments previously 18 months.
Supporting Ladies’s Cricket
“The ICC ought to clearly ship on their very own guidelines and ensure that they’re supporting ladies’s cricket because the ECB do,” stated the PM’s spokesman.
“That’s why we help the truth that the ECB are making representations to the ICC on this concern.
“The erosion of girls and women’ rights by the Taliban is clearly appalling. We’ll work with the ECB on this concern, we’re involved with them. Finally this can be a matter for the ICC in relation to the Champions Trophy.
“We must always do not forget that Afghanistani cricket for a very long time has been a beacon of hope for the Afghanistani folks, it’s horrible the way in which through which the ladies’s staff has been suppressed.
“This concern in relation to the erosion of girls’s and women’ rights by the Taliban is clearly a much bigger concern than cricket. The main target right here shouldn’t be on the cricketers, however on the Taliban.”
The letter penned by Labour backbencher Tonia Antoniazzi, and signed by two of the occasion’s former leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Lord Kinnock, learn: “We urge the ECB to contemplate a boycott of the upcoming match towards Afghanistan…to ship a transparent sign that such grotesque abuses won’t be tolerated.
“We should stand towards intercourse apartheid and we implore the ECB to ship a agency message of solidarity and hope to Afghan ladies and women that their struggling has not been neglected.”
Gould responded by condemning the erosion of girls’s rights and vowing to work with counterparts at house and abroad “to discover all doable avenues for significant change”.
Because it stands, the sport is ready to happen as scheduled on the Gaddafi Stadium on February 26.
READ MORE: Politicians urge ECB to boycott England’s Champions Trophy game with Afghanistan
