“There’s all types of lines you can draw. We’ve drawn a line.” So explained Mike Baird, the chair of Cricket Australia, last month in explaining the governing body’s stance on playing against Afghanistan, the country that has just banned women from looking out of windows.
According to a new decree from the Taliban government, new buildings must not be constructed with windows through which women can be seen. Existing buildings with windows must be walled up or covered. “Seeing women working in kitchens, in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to obscene acts,” said Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesperson for the government.
At present Cricket Australia – in common with the England and Wales Cricket Board – are refusing to schedule bilateral series against Afghanistan out of concern for “the deterioration of basic human rights for women in Afghanistan”. But, confusingly, both countries are perfectly happy to play them in global competitions – Australia at last year’s Twenty20 World Cup, England at next month’s Champions Trophy.
Which, however you square it, is a weirdly precise place to draw your moral line. Our concern for the women and girls of Afghanistan apparently kicks in at 1.5 cricket matches. Two or more games in a single sitting: an unconscionable act of collusion in a murderous, misogynist, medieval death cult. Fewer than two: all right lads, crack on.
At which point, we run into the equivocation and realpolitik of the cricketing establishment, arguing against a sporting boycott of Afghanistan on the grounds that it would extinguish the hope and joy generated by the men’s team over the past two decades, while achieving little tangible benefit.
“I don’t think it would make a jot of difference to the ruling party there to kick them out,” the outgoing International Cricket Council chair Greg Barclay said last month. Which, you have to say, is a pretty high bar to set for sporting activism. Fair enough, wave your banners. But until you’re actually capable of literally overthrowing the Taliban, then stop wasting our time.
We are warned not to punish the richly gifted men’s team for the sins of their government, as if the dignity and humanity of 20 million Afghan women were simply acceptable collateral damage against the wider backdrop of Rashid Khan’s availability for the next T20 World Cup. We are reminded that Afghanistan had little culture of women’s cricket before 2021 in any case, with the implication that – basically – the erasure of an entire international team is no great loss in the grander scheme of things.
To be blessed with this kind of benign adult wisdom! And yet, even to address this argument on its own terms is to subject it to greater strain than it can remotely handle. The very existence of the men’s team – pretty much the only representative side given official blessing – is evidence enough of its propaganda value.
High-ranking Taliban officials have posted photos with the team at official functions, called senior players to congratulate them after wins, allowed games to be shown on big screens in public parks to a grateful male-only audience. This is politics: how could it not be? Cricket is uniquely popular among the young Pashtun men who form the backbone of the Taliban’s appeal. This is the only reason the fun police have allowed it to continue: this team is now essentially a client outfit, a PR offensive, a form of cricketing diplomacy.
And of course the easy targets here are the empty shirts at the ECB, Cricket Australia and the ICC, trapped between two forms of countervailing cowardice. Cancelling a loss-making bilateral tour costs nothing. Boycotting a big tournament game has significant implications for broadcasters, sponsors and future commercial value.
But of course the ICC is basically an events management company now, a governing body that has largely given up on governance. The ECB and Cricket Australia are peripheral figures here, merely underlined by the response from the former’s chief executive, Richard Gould to calls for a full boycott. The centre of gravity in this issue, as with pretty much everything in cricket these days, is India. And so the relevant question here is less what “should” happen than: what is the realistic range of possibilities that Jay Shah, the new ICC chair and acolyte of Narendra Modi, will allow to happen?
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Officially, the Modi government does not recognise the new Afghan regime. In reality, the past couple of years have seen a pragmatic rapprochement, in defiance of the cultural and religious divides between the two countries. Diplomatic ties were restored in June 2022. Meanwhile, the Afghan embassy in Delhi and its two consulates in Mumbai and Hyderabad are said to have passed quietly into the control of pro-Taliban officials.
Driven by an ever-present fear of Chinese influence, and encouraged by a slight frosting of relations with Pakistan, the Modi government has spotted an opportunity to build bridges. Naturally, cricket has played a prominent role in diplomatic ties: Afghanistan play their home matches in Greater Noida just outside Delhi, India invited them to play a white-ball series in January, and when Afghanistan reached the T20 World Cup semi-finals last summer they issued a statement thanking India for their “continuous help in capacity-building of the Afghan cricket team”.
And so, if India are overly perturbed by the disappearance of women’s rights under the Taliban, let’s just say it’s not immediately apparent. Afghan players continue to staff the Indian Premier League. Afghan men’s teams continue to be welcome to tour India, to use Indian facilities and draw on Indian expertise. The Afghan economy has collapsed since 2021 and is in desperate need of new trade partnerships. Anyone want to connect the dots here?
None of which is to argue against the power of the sporting boycott. But to focus on unilateral gesture at the expense of collective action is essentially to acquiesce to the status quo. To oppose the iron age misogyny of the Taliban must also be to oppose the structures of capitalist power that keep it in place, from the commercial cowardice of sporting administrators to the cynical collaboration of the Modi government. Too much? Too hard? Too radical? Then, like the factotums who run the game, you’ve also chosen to draw your line in an entirely pragmatic place.
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