Cricket: MCC plans to send team to Afghanistan

THE MCC are planning to send a team on tour to Afghanistan. Club president Phillip Hodson explained that it is hoped a team will soon be able to tour the country, which is an emerging nation in world cricket but also one where British forces continue to suffer casualties in their mission to keep the peace.

Hodson said he plans first to travel to Afghanistan himself, and then on to bordering Pakistan.

But he does not envisage an MCC team being sent in the foreseeable future to Pakistan, where there has been no international cricket since the fatal terrorist attack on buses transporting officials and players during the Lahore Test against Sri Lanka in March 2009.

“I am going to Afghanistan to look at Kabul and the cricket pitches we have put in,” Hodson told the BBC’s Test Match Special. “Then I will go to Lahore as a private citizen.

“I think there is much more chance of taking a team to Afghanistan than there is to Pakistan. I think we could do something in Afghanistan and I don’t think it will be long away.”

MCC’s touring teams typically comprise a clutch of former professional players alongside promising club cricketers.

Further details of touring plans may emerge after the MCC’s annual general meeting in early May.