LONDON, Aug 20: Five Indian women cricketers have gone missing in London, in what appears to be an attempt at illegal immigration, newspapers here reported on Wednesday.

The Times daily said the women, aged between 19 and 25, vanished a week ago in Hounslow, west London, where they were billeted in two houses, leaving ten team-mates behind.

Sports officials in India told The Times that some of the women, on a trip to play in a women’s cricket festival, had paid a “small fortune” to join the trip to Britain and had been promised jobs.

The paper said officials from the Punjab Women’s Cricket Association had never heard of Jalandhar’s Lynex Cricket Club before last week.

Most of the five missing women had a track record as cricketers, but the suspicion was that some of the others on the team had no sporting background, officials said. The British Home Office told The Times that the disappearances were not an issue as the women “hadn’t actually overstayed yet”.—AFP