The men's national team, already on the rise before the takeover, continued to grow under the new regime, defying expectations and recording a surprising upset in international competition. Privately funded cricket academies are seeing a rapid increase in the number of new players.
Cricket's appeal to the Taliban may be partly rooted in the sport's long-standing popularity among the Pashtun ethnic community, where the Taliban has traditionally had its strongest support. However, as cricket expands beyond ethnic groups, governments may also find it useful.
“Cricket unites the country,” said Abdul Ghaffar Farooq, the Taliban's deputy spokesman for the Ministry of Virtue.
Within days of the August 2021 takeover, Anas Haqqani, the powerful brother of the Taliban interior minister, visited the Afghanistan Cricket Board to demonstrate the new government's support for the game.
Haqqani, a cricket fan who recently injured his leg while playing volleyball, said a Taliban soldier could have been a great cricket star. “If we hadn't been at war, many of us would have been on the national team by now,” he said in a rare interview. “The future of cricket here is very bright.”
Taliban soldiers and other spectators watched the Cricket World Cup up close in India last fall, gathering on large screens in parks, men's salons at wedding halls and TV shops to watch. Taliban soldiers fired salute shots into the air as they cheered on their team's shock victories over England, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands.
“In Afghanistan, people can't enjoy anything, but cricket gives us happiness,” he said, adding that he often watched soccer matches on TV at his travel agency in central Kabul until they were broadcast less frequently. said Mohammad Gul Ahmadzai, 48.
While world football is often dominated by teams with deep pockets, cricket's lack of serious international players gives Afghans a more realistic chance of winning, he said. Told.
Some say Afghanistan's cricket craze is largely driven by a sense of desperation. Farhart Amirzai, 17, said he and his friends had come to see a professional cricket career as the only way out of poverty.
After the Taliban took power, Amirzai said, the boys “lost interest in education.” Amirzai spends much of his time practicing on a barren field in Kabul with an improvised cricket ball wrapped in tape. “Young people think that even if they finish school or university, they will not find a good job under the current government. So they try their luck in cricket.”
Applications to join cricket academies have skyrocketed since the Taliban took power, but most young Afghans, including Amirzai, cannot afford to pay the fees.
Taliban fighter Abdul Mobin Mansour also wants to take part, but the 19-year-old said he has little time due to work. He said he had wanted to be a national team player ever since he and his comrades (who at the time were still in armed rebellion and hiding in caves) took up the sport with battery-powered radios.
And Afghan women have no chance at all. One of the Taliban-led government's first actions after taking power was to ban women from sports, reintroducing a policy the movement had introduced when it was previously in power. It shattered the dreams of female athletes.
Believed to have been invented in England in the 16th century, cricket was one of the British Empire's most popular cultural exports. By the early 20th century, the sport was popular in Australia, British India (including modern-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh), and other parts of the region. However, it was slow to spread in Afghanistan, and buzkashi remained the national sport. Buzkashi, an equestrian sport in which riders attempt to score goals with carcasses (traditionally the carcasses of goats or calves), is now mostly fake.
It was here that cricket's fortunes began to change after the 1979 Soviet invasion forced millions to flee to Pakistan. The sport quickly spread in Afghan refugee camps in northwestern Pakistan, which were primarily populated by Pashtuns. The sport then made its way to Kabul when some Afghans returned home in the late 1990s, when the Taliban first took power.
Among the first Afghan cricketers was Allah Dad Nouri, who was the captain of the national team at the time. Nouri said in an interview that he was initially worried that the Taliban would not allow cricket. However, his family's ties to the regime may have helped convince his family. “My brother-in-law, who later spent time in Guantanamo, had already told the Taliban about me,” Nouri recalled. “He told them, 'This man is the greatest cricketer, and if he takes Kabul he should recognize cricket.'”
Years later, when British businessman Stuart Bentham arrived in Kabul, he was one of the first foreigners to watch an Afghan cricket match held in the same Kabul stadium used by the Taliban for executions. It became.
At the time, the Taliban forced soccer players to shave their heads as punishment for wearing shorts. Bentham said that while cricketers' long trousers may have lessened religious concerns, the popularity of cricket in neighboring Pakistan probably also influenced the Taliban's desire to promote the sport.
“At that time, Pakistan had a lot of influence over the Taliban,” he said.
The plight of female athletes
Uncomfortable questions are beginning to arise abroad about the importance of the Afghan team to the Taliban. The Australian national cricket team announced early last year that it would boycott a match against Afghanistan to protest the Taliban's oppression of girls and women. However, during the Cricket World Cup, Australians canceled their boycott, much to the dismay of many Afghan women and others.
Weida Omari, 35, said she hoped no foreign team would agree to play in Kabul's stadium under the Taliban regime. Omari worked as Kabul City's women's sports coordinator until her colleague's team was disbanded within days of her takeover.
She has since fled the country, but 80 percent of the female athletes she coached remain in Afghanistan. “Their families have accused them of angering the Taliban by becoming athletes, and now they are being forced to marry,” Omari said. “I have a lot of people calling me wanting to cry.”
Despite the Taliban-run government remaining internationally isolated and under severe sanctions, a spokesperson for the Afghanistan Cricket Board said it had recently received approximately $16 million from the Dubai-based International Cricket Council. It said it had received a subsidy, and media reports said Afghanistan cricket could expect similar subsidies. Annual contributions for the next few years.
“No penalties will be imposed,” the ICC said in a statement. [Afghanistan Cricket Board], or players who abide by the laws set by the government of that country.'' However, she continues to champion women's cricket in the country. ICC does not release details about its members' funding.
The Taliban's urban development minister, Hamdullah Nomani, said in an interview that plans to build a new large-scale cricket stadium in Kabul are being discussed in the top leadership. The idea for a new stadium was conceived under the previous government, but the Taliban-run government appears intent on supporting the completion of the project with private funding.
The government's main concern is that the stadium may not be large enough. “We don't have enough land,” Nomani said.
Lutfullah Qasimyar and Mirwais Mohammadi contributed to this report.
