The Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) nightmare England tour nearly added another bizarre chapter when their touring Under-19 team was mistaken by a group of anti-immigrant protesters for asylum seekers on Wednesday.

The Guardian reported that a group of masked protesters gathered outside the four-star Marriott hotel in Portsmouth after reports suggested that about 40 men who did not seem to be English had arrived there.

The situation de-escalated swiftly after George Madgwick, a Reform councillor, called the hotel to seek clarity and mediate between the team and the protesters after a “massively unfortunate incident”.

Madgwick and the protestors learned that the hotel was hosting the touring Pakistan Under-19 cricket team whose series in England was running parallel to that of the senior national side. After losing the solitary Youth Test earlier this month, the Pakistan junior side had begun on a strong note in the One-Day games, beating England colts by 177 runs in Arundel, about 45 kilometres away from the Mariott hotel that was their base on the southern English coast.

“I also spoke to the coach of the team, who was very understanding,” Madgwick said. “I went out to the protesters and told them, ‘You’ve got it wrong guys, it’s a cricket club.’ They left within a couple of minutes. It was a massively unfortunate incident.

“From the perspective of the people of Portsmouth who are already on high alert, this was a coach from the same company which was turning up with about 40 foreign men.”

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Following the incident, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has reached out to the PCB to check on the team members while reviweing security arrangements for the remainder of the tour.

The teams are set to face off in three more Youth ODIs between September 12 and 16. Elsewhere in Egbaston, the Babar Azam-led Pakistan senior side endured another horror start after being bundled out for 133 in the first innings. The team had previously lost the first two Tests in the series by convincing margins.