While the Taliban were on the verge of taking Kabul, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson‘s chief of staff, Dan Rosenfield, spent his day watching cricket, according to reports.

According to a report by the Sunday Telegraph, Rosenfield was attending the Test match between England and India at the Lord’s Cricket Ground on August 12, three days before the Afghan capital fell to Taliban forces.

Also read | England rolls back COVID curbs as omicron threat recedes

Even after the fall of Kabul, and amid ongoing evacuations from Afghanistan, Rosenfield was present at the Hundred final at Lord’s on August 21.

10 Downing Street has already received considerable flak for its handling of the situation in Afghanistan. Critics have pointed out that UK leadership did not take the Taliban threat seriously until it was too late.

Critics have also pointed out that the UK government’s handling of the withdrawal was problematic, and that many who had worked with UK agencies and forces were left behind. In fact, a major controversy broke out last year after the UK’s withdrawal from Afghanistan when a Foreign Office whistleblower claimed that bureaucratic red tape, ministerial interventions, and a lack of resources and planning led to “people being left to die at the hands of the Taliban.”

The report is unlikely to do any favours for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who, among other things, was recently accused of lying about authorising the rescue of cats and dogs from a British charity in Afghanistan following the fall of Kabul. While Johnson had claimed that he had no hand in authorising the rescue, emails leaked this week suggest otherwise.

Also read | UK government holds breath as it awaits ‘partygate’ report

The UK Prime Minister is going through a testing phase in his political career, and his credibility has already been battered by revelations that he hosted ‘lockdown parties’ at 10 Downing Street while the rest of the nation was under lockdown, courtesy of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This new report is expected to compound the 57-year-old’s political woes.