What should have been a quiet evening for Pakistan’s Under-19 cricketers in Portsmouth turned surreal when they suddenly found themselves at the centre of an anti-migrant protest outside their team hotel.
The touring side, in England to face their age-group counterparts, were staying at the Marriott Hotel on Tuesday when around 30 to 40 protesters gathered outside, convinced that a coach of newly arrived asylum seekers had just been dropped off.
They were wrong. Completely.
Rumour, a Photo, and a Crowd
The chain reaction began with a single photograph. A picture of people stepping off a coach appeared online, accompanied by assumptions that they were migrants being housed at the hotel. No confirmation. No checks. Just speculation.
From there, the narrative snowballed. Within hours, a crowd formed outside the Marriott, their anger aimed at the wrong target.
Police were called shortly before 6.30pm. Hampshire Constabulary officers arrived to find protesters voicing concerns about immigration, unaware that the supposed “foreign nationals” were teenagers representing Pakistan at Under-19 level.
It took a local councillor to puncture the fiction.
Councillor Steps In
Reform councillor George Madgwick contacted the hotel and quickly established the truth. He spoke directly with the Pakistan team’s coach, who, by Madgwick’s account, responded calmly despite the bizarre situation unfolding outside.
Madgwick then walked out to the protesters and delivered the reality check.
He told them they had the wrong group. It wasn’t a bus of asylum seekers. It was a cricket team.
The effect was instant. Within minutes, the crowd dispersed.
Madgwick later described the episode as “massively unfortunate” and admitted it reflected poorly on Portsmouth. Speaking to the BBC, he underlined how flimsy the foundations of the protest had been: a single online image, a snap judgement, and no factual basis.
“Someone online saw a group of what looked like foreign nationals leaving the coach and put a photo of it online and that's where it spurred from,” he said. “It was mere speculation rather than based on truth or fact.”
Hampshire Constabulary confirmed that officers spoke to those gathered, explained that their concerns were misplaced, and identified no offences. The area was clear shortly before 9pm.
Young Cricketers Dragged Into a Culture War
The players themselves had done nothing more controversial than arrive at their hotel after a day on tour. Yet they suddenly found their presence in the country misrepresented and politicised.
The incident drew sharp criticism from Portsmouth North MP Amanda Martin, who condemned the way misinformation had turned a group of teenage athletes into the focus of a protest.
“There is a legitimate debate to be had about immigration, but it must be based on facts not misinformation or rumour,” she said.
The England and Wales Cricket Board moved quickly to check on the Pakistan Under-19 squad’s wellbeing and began reviewing security arrangements for the rest of the tour, keen to ensure that a sporting visit does not become entangled again in local tensions stoked by online conjecture.
Tour Continues on the Field
While Pakistan’s senior team wrestles with England in the Test arena, the Under-19s have been quietly piecing together their own series.
On the pitch, their tour has already swung both ways. They lost a hard-fought four-day match against England Under-19 by just 10 runs in Arundel, a narrow defeat that hinted at resilience and talent. They responded emphatically in the Youth ODI on September 9, crushing England Under-19 by 177 runs.
They came to England to test themselves, to grow into future internationals, to write early chapters of cricketing careers.
Instead, for one evening in Portsmouth, they became unwilling symbols in a row that had nothing to do with them at all — a stark reminder of how quickly rumour can spill from a screen onto the street, and how easily sport can be dragged into battles it never signed up to fight.
