The Maidenhead-based British Pakistan netball team is heartbroken

The women have been training every week for months and players even travel from Scotland to be part of the Berkshire club.

Leya Shah, 20, said she felt discouraged “given the amount of effort and training we put into this.”

But they have “built a sisterhood together as a team,” she added.

Her 15-year-old teammate Sumayya Safdar agreed, saying: “We’ve had very long training camps and to find out we’re not going is heartbreaking.”

The team, which is self-funded and has only been playing since last year, is made up of British-Asian women aged 15 to 23.

The academy was established in an attempt to address the under-representation of British Asian girls in performance netball.

So when the Cosmopolitan Roses were asked to form a new Pakistani netball team and represent the country at competitive level, it was a huge opportunity.