England v Afghanistan should go ahead - culture secretary

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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.

Female participation in sport has effectively been outlawed since the Taliban's return to power in 2021.

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 think they deny sports fans the opportunity they love and they can very much penalise the athletes and sportspeople who work very, very hard to reach the top of their game and are then denied the opportunities to compete.

"They are not the people we want to penalise for the appalling actions of the Taliban against women and girls."

International Cricket Council (ICC) regulations state full membership is conditional upon having women's cricket teams and pathway structures in place.

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

Sir Keir Starmer was asked directly about the matter at Prime Minister's Questions earlier this week by Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi, who authored the cross-party letter addressed to the ECB.

The prime minister said "the suppression of freedom" should be "condemned in the strongest terms" and said the government was speaking with international counterparts on the issue.

ECB chief executive Richard Gould has condemned the erosion of women's rights and called for a unified response to action against Afghanistan.

He wrote to ICC chief executive Geoff Allardice on Friday, calling on the global governing body to take action after what he called "gender apartheid".

In the letter, seen by BBC Sport, he called on the ICC to place "immediate condition" on Afghanistan's full member status to provide women's cricket by a certain date.

He also called for Afghanistan's funding to be withheld until women's cricket is reinstated and support be given to Afghan women's players who have fled the country allowing them to compete as a refugee team.

Cricket South Africa has has also called for "unified and collective approach", while the Professional Cricketers' Association (PCA) declined to comment on the prospect of individual England players potentially boycotting the fixture, but told BBC Sport it is "an extremely complex issue".

Nandy believes allowing the match to go ahead would shine a light on the issue, but stressed the UK should not be "rolling out the red carpet" at the event.

She said: "When China hosted the Winter Olympics, I was very vocal, many of us were very vocal about making sure that we didn't send dignitaries to that event, that we didn't give them the PR coup that they were looking for when they were forcibly incarcerating the Uyghur in Xinjian.

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

"The question is what are the right levers to make progress for those women and girls. Diplomacy is the key channel but public pressure has a part to play.

"I think it is right that we should allow sport to be sport but we should also use these moments to highlight the plight of these girls."

An ICC working group, set up after the Taliban takeover in 2021, has met with representatives of the Afghanistan government and is keen to use its position and the sport of cricket to influence change in the country.

"The ICC remains closely engaged with the situation in Afghanistan and continues to collaborate with our members," they said in a statement.

The governing body added it was their intention to "support the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) in fostering cricket development and ensuring playing opportunities for both men and women in Afghanistan".

Its stance is that the ACB is not in control of government policy and therefore players should not be punished for it.

In his letter to the ICC, Gould called for the ICC's working group to be reformed, given it is entirely made up of men.

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