Protests Erupt Over Misidentified Pakistani Cricket Team in Portsmouth
Anti‑immigration protesters descended on a Portsmouth hotel convinced they had found a new target. They left minutes later, quietly, after discovering the building was hosting Pakistan’s Under-19 cricket team rather than a group of asylum seekers.
The mix-up, almost farcical in its detail, unfolded against a far darker backdrop.
Portsmouth had already witnessed a large, volatile demonstration on Sunday, after a dinghy carrying an estimated 140 asylum seekers arrived at Eastney harbour. A black-clad vigilante group tried to choke off the surrounding streets, attempting to stop the new arrivals from leaving the port area.
Andy Burnham, the prime minister, condemned what he called “intimidating and thuggish behaviour” and vowed to stop the “politics of poison seeping into our streets”. Police eventually broke up that protest in the early hours of Monday after securing a dispersal order and warning demonstrators they faced arrest if they stayed.
The anger did not simply drain away overnight.
On Monday, the sight of a coach and a group of young Asian men outside the city’s Marriott Hotel began circulating on social media. The images were enough to bring protesters back out, this time to the hotel car park.
George Madgwick, leader of the Reform UK group on Hampshire county council, was called to the scene as the crowd swelled to around 40 to 50 people. In a now-deleted Facebook post, he described walking into a situation primed for confrontation, only to be told a very different story by hotel staff.
“The hotel explained it was a Pakistani cricket team staying. The team coach came to speak to me personally and I saw proof,” Madgwick wrote. He then walked back outside and addressed the gathering.
“I then went to speak to the crowd gathering of 40-50 people and confirmed with them and assured them that it was a cricket team. Immediately the crowd respectfully accepted that. Within five minutes they were gone.
“I’m glad I could do my bit to help the situation and stop tensions rising. But the government need to understand why things like this happen. It’s not because the protestors and crowds are bad people. Local residents just want to protect the city they love in the best way they know how.”
One anti-racism group saw the episode very differently.
A spokesperson for Stand Up to Racism told the Portsmouth News: “Allowing racists to mobilise like this every time they become suspicious of any group of non-white people is extremely dangerous. It is racism in action and it has to stop.”
While the protesters melted away, the implications did not. The England and Wales Cricket Board contacted the Pakistan Cricket Board to check on the wellbeing of the young touring players and staff, and is reviewing security arrangements for the remainder of the Under-19 squad’s trip.
Pakistan Under-19s had just come off a tight four-day Test against England Under-19s, losing by 10 runs last week. They are scheduled to play a one-day match against the same opponents on Wednesday at Arundel, about 25 miles from Portsmouth, before a final ODI in Guildford on Saturday.
As the junior side tries to focus on cricket, Pakistan’s senior men’s team is also in the country, contesting the third and final Test against England at Edgbaston.
For one touring squad of teenagers, a routine hotel stay has already offered a jarring glimpse of the tensions swirling far beyond the boundary rope.
