Afghanistan Girls’s XI gamers huddle earlier than the cricket match between Afghanistan Girls’s XI and Cricket With out Borders XI at Junction Oval in Melbourne on January 30, 2025. — AFP
Afghanistan’s girls cricketers on Thursday performed their first sport since fleeing the Taliban three years in the past, a charity match in Australia that captain Nahida Sapan hoped would spark “a movement for change”.
A whole lot of ladies athletes fled Afghanistan because the Taliban took over in August 2021, escaping a hardline stance that primarily banned girls’s sport and schooling.
A lot of the nationwide girls’s cricket facet settled as refugees in Australia, the place they reunited for the primary time on Thursday to play a charity match in Melbourne.
“Together, we’re building not just a team, we’re building a movement for change and promise,” Sapan stated within the run-up to the sport.
“We have big hopes for this match because this match can open doors for Afghan women, for education, sport and in the future.”
The Afghanistan Cricket Board made a major stride in November 2020 when it handed 25 promising girls cricketers skilled contracts.
However earlier than the fledgling squad had an opportunity to play collectively, the Taliban captured capital Kabul and declared an finish to girls’s cricket.
“We have sacrificed a lot to be here today,” stated cricketer Firooza Amiri after the match.
“The situation in Afghanistan is very terrible. Women don’t have their rights.
“I can reside freely in Australia and reside my life the best way I need.
“But back home in Afghanistan… I can only say it is very heartbreaking and very hard to live in that situation.”
‘Profound disappointment’
Diana Barakzai, who helped discovered Afghanistan’s first girls’s cricket program virtually 20 years in the past, stated Thursday’s match was an “amazing moment”.
Yosofzai of Afghanistan Girls’s XI bats through the cricket match between Afghanistan Girls’s XI and Cricket With out Borders XI at Junction Oval in Melbourne on January 30, 2025. — AFP
“I’m sure it’s a big message for the world, that the world will do something for Afghan women,” she advised AFP.
“Especially for opening the school doors, opening up work for women.”
Of the 25 girls as soon as contracted by the Afghanistan Cricket Board, 22 at the moment are settled within the Australian cities of Melbourne and Canberra.
A few of these gamers have lobbied the governing Worldwide Cricket Council within the hopes of forming a refugee group with some form of official standing.
“A profound sadness remains that we, as women, cannot represent our country like the male cricketers,” some gamers wrote in a joint letter final yr.
“The creation of this team will allow all Afghan women who want to represent their country to come together under one banner.”
The council has to this point ignored these calls.
Thursday’s sport was performed at Melbourne’s Junction Oval, a storied floor the place a younger Shane Warne as soon as plied his commerce.
The Afghan facet performed an invitational outfit representing Cricket With out Borders, a charity which goals to attract younger girls into the sport.
Governing physique Cricket Australia threw its weight behind the match, pledging to “advocate” for the Afghan girls’s facet on the highest ranges.
“I’m just so proud of everyone across Australian cricket who’s worked to support the players since they’ve been in Australia,” chief govt Nick Hockley stated earlier this week.
Citing human rights considerations, Australia has lately boycotted a sequence of non-tournament fixtures in opposition to the Afghanistan males’s facet.
