The Afghan regime is surely the world’s most sexist. The Taliban, an Islamist militia that swept to power when President Joe Biden ended military support for a democratic government in Kabul, bar girls from studying beyond sixth grade and women from raising their voices in public. If a woman steps outside, she must be covered from head to toe. If the morality police spot an infraction, they can punish it in any way they deem “appropriate”. All refugees tell tales of the joyless theocracy Afghanistan has become. But few are as poignant as those of its exiled women cricketers.
Around nine months before the Taliban took over, Afghanistan formed its first national women’s cricket team, with 25 players. Nearly all have since fled abroad. Now scattered across Australia, Canada and Britain, they are fighting a lonely battle to be allowed to represent their country. For them, cricket is not just a game. It is a way of showing that women can make their own choices, rather than meekly obeying the rules laid down by unelected bigots with beards.
Cricket is an unlikely weapon of resistance. Afghanistan’s national sport is Buzkashi, a rugged version of polo in which horse-mounted players fight to toss a goat carcass into a goal. But it is cricket that has become Afghanistan’s favourite sport.
In neighbouring Pakistan and India, cricket’s roots stretch back to the 18th century, when British colonists introduced it. Afghans did not embrace the game until much later. During civil wars in the 1980s and 1990s, millions of Afghans fled into Pakistan. In refugee camps, they saw their Pakistani neighbours playing cricket, and tried it. Raees Ahmadzai, a former player, remembers improvising with a washing paddle as a bat and a tennis ball wrapped in tape.
In 2001 America toppled the Taliban for hosting al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that had just flown planes packed with people into the twin towers in New York. Many Afghan refugees returned home, bringing cricket with them. Over the next few years a small group formed the core of a national men’s team. Despite a paltry budget, they have become remarkably successful and wildly popular. In the most recently concluded T20 World Cup, they reached the final four.
As a young girl, Ms Afghan watched the men’s team on television and asked her mother why the country did not have a women’s team, too. The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) had tried to set one up in 2010, but quietly shelved the plan after four years, citing a shortage of female players. In 2020 it tried again. Players for the national side were chosen from school teams—a pool of just 500 girls. By the end of the year, 25 were offered contracts.
Most of their families hesitated to let them play in public. Benafsha Hashimi, a team member, remembers her mother wishing that she would play poorly and give up on a sporting career. Roya Samim, another player, says that whenever there was a threat of an attack from the Taliban, officials would say the female cricketers had provoked them.
The gloves are off
Yet they never gave up. Tuba Sangar, an administrator for the women’s team, recalls their pride when they got their first cricket gear. They showed off their kit bags in public, calling it the “best moment ever”, she remembers. By 2021 they were training regularly, in preparation for their first overseas tour, to Oman. For a short while, their prospects seemed rosy.
Then the Taliban took over. The women knew their lives were at risk. Australia’s government, understanding the danger, granted visas to the players and their families. Most escaped from Kabul within days, but not Ms Afghan’s family. They did not have passports.
So they headed for Pakistan overland. Ms Afghan dumped her cricket kit and destroyed her treasured certificates by washing the ink from the paper. She could not risk being identified. Her coach forged medical documents for her. (At the time, Pakistan was accepting refugees who needed medical treatment.) But still, Ms Afghan and her family were turned back at several of the 18 Taliban checkpoints they approached, and had to keep trying. After three months, they at last made it to Pakistan. It took another nine months to get their papers to move to Australia—and safety.
For the men’s cricket team, not much has changed under the Taliban. Their calendar remains packed. Most “home” matches are played in the United Arab Emirates or India, since few teams are willing to travel to Afghanistan. The Taliban are in two minds about men’s cricket. Hardliners want to ban it, because banning fun is what they do. Others quietly enjoy watching the game. A former player told The Economist that some Taliban leaders call players to congratulate them after big wins.
Afghanistan is a prison, says Ms Hashimi. Now, in Australia, she can feel the sun on her face without fear of arrest, and she can study. But her dream of playing cricket for her country is over. Or is it?
The women’s team have not played together since they fled from their homes, though several keep their hands in by playing for local clubs. Yet they have a plan. They are urging the International Cricket Council (ICC), the sport’s governing body, to recognise a refugee team. Under the ICC’s own rules, full members like Afghanistan must have a proper women’s cricket programme and allocate a portion of their funds to it. The Afghanistan Cricket Board, which depends on the ICC for most of its budget, allocates none of that money to women’s cricket. So the women argue that a portion of the ICC funds earmarked for Afghanistan should instead fund a team of female exiles.
The logic of this argument makes international cricket officials squirm. A spokesperson for the ICC says that only the Afghan national body can recognise a women’s team (which the Taliban won’t allow). Yet some other sports have found workarounds. At this year’s Olympic games, Afghanistan fielded a team of three women and three men, all chosen by the country’s exiled Olympic body.
Some campaigners have called for the Afghan men’s team to be banned from international cricket, just as South Africa was banned during apartheid. But most Afghan women players oppose such a move, since it would deprive their compatriots of a rare source of pride and pleasure.
Ms Samim suggests that the ICC could support an Afghan women’s team based abroad. It could easily afford to do so: the ICC generates $600m a year. But so far, it has demurred. Male cricket grandees can be clueless. In September the captains of the Afghan and New Zealand men’s teams posed for a photo beside a trophy veiled in a black cloth—and then “unveiled” it. Neither noticed the awful symbolism.
Globally, women’s cricket is booming, with a lucrative league launched in India in 2023 and the ICC announcing in 2024 that men’s and women’s national teams would receive equal prize money. For the Afghan women, though, time is slipping away. Ms Samim sighs that she has lost three years of her cricketing life, with no guarantee of a reprieve before her youth and batting skills fade. Back home in Afghanistan, no new girls are learning to play cricket—indeed, the Taliban are straining to prevent girls from learning anything much besides cookery, obedience and fear.
No member of Afghanistan’s male team has publicly spoken up about the women’s plight. In 2023, when the men’s team were playing in Australia, Ms Afghan visited their hotel. She approached one of the stars and asked him why he had not said anything. He listened quietly, and after a pause, simply said, “Sorry.”
© 2024, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com
