The men's national team was already on the rise before the takeover, but has continued to thrive under the new regime, defying expectations and recording impressive upsets in international play. Privately funded cricket academies have seen a rise in the number of new players.
Cricket's appeal to the Taliban may be due in part to the sport's long-standing popularity in ethnic Pashtun communities, where the Taliban traditionally draws the strongest support. But as cricket expands across ethnic lines, the regime may also view the sport as beneficial.
“Cricket brings the country together,” said Abdul Ghaffar Farooq, spokesman for the Taliban Ministry of Order and Virtue.
Within days of seizing power in August 2021, Anas Haqqani, the younger brother of the Taliban's interior minister, visited the Afghanistan Cricket Board to show the new government's support for the sport.
Haqqani, a cricket fan who recently injured his foot while playing volleyball, said the Taliban soldiers could have become excellent cricket stars. “If we had not waged war, many of us would now be in the national team,” he said in a rare interview. “The future of cricket here is very bright.”
Taliban soldiers and other spectators closely followed last fall's Cricket World Cup in India, gathering to watch on big screens in parks, in men's saloons at wedding venues and in television shops. To encourage their team, which achieved shocking victories against England, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, some Taliban soldiers fired shots in celebration into the sky.
“People don't have anything to enjoy in Afghanistan, but cricket gives us happiness,” said Mohammad Gul Ahmadzai, 48, who used to watch football matches on TV at his travel agency in central Kabul until broadcasts became less frequent.
He added that although world football is dominated by teams that are often awash with cash, the fewer number of serious international competitors in cricket gives the Afghans a more realistic chance of winning.
Others say Afghanistan's cricket craze is fueled primarily by desperation. Farhard Amirzai, 17, said he and his friends had come to see professional cricket as the only way out of poverty.
After the Taliban seized power, “the boys lost interest in education,” said Amirzai, who spends most of his time training in a barren field in Kabul using a makeshift cricket ball covered with tape. “Young people think that even if they graduate from school or university, they will not find a good job under the current government. So, they try their luck in cricket.
Although cricket academies have seen a significant rise in sign-ups since the Taliban takeover, most young Afghans, including Amirzai, cannot afford them.
Taliban soldier Abdul Mubin Mansour would also like to join, but the 19-year-old said his job leaves him little time. He said he had wanted to become a national team player ever since he and his comrades – who were waging armed insurgency and hiding in caves at the time – began following the sport on battery-operated radios.
For Afghan women, there is no chance at all. One of the first actions taken by the Taliban-run government after seizing power was to ban women from playing sports, reintroducing a policy the Taliban had previously put in place when it was in power, and crushing the dreams of female athletes.
Cricket is believed to have been invented in England in the 16th century, and was one of the most popular cultural exports of the British Empire. By the early twentieth century, the sport flourished in Australia, British India – which includes what are today India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – and elsewhere in the region. But its spread has been slow in Afghanistan, where the national sport remains buzkashi, an equestrian game in which riders try to score a goal using a carcass, traditionally a goat or calf, but which is now almost always fake.
Cricket's fortunes began to change here after the 1979 Soviet invasion forced millions to flee to Pakistan. The sport quickly spread to the Afghan refugee camps in northwestern Pakistan, which were primarily home to Pashtuns. The sport later found its way to Kabul when some Afghans returned in the late 1990s during the time the Taliban first came to power.
Among the early Afghan cricketers was Allahdad Nouri, then captain of the national team. In an interview, Noori said he was initially concerned that the Taliban would not allow cricket. But his family's ties to the regime may have helped convince them. “My brother-in-law, who had spent time in Guantanamo, had already told the Taliban about me,” Nouri recalls. “He told them: ‘This man is the greatest cricketer, and if you take Kabul, you must agree to cricket.’”
When British businessman Stuart Bentham arrived in Kabul two years later, he became one of the first foreigners to attend an Afghan cricket match, held in the same Kabul stadium that the Taliban had been using to carry out executions.
At the time, the Taliban shaved the heads of football players as punishment for wearing shorts. Bentham said the long trousers worn by cricketers may have raised less religious concerns, but the popularity of cricket in neighboring Pakistan may also have played a role in the Taliban's desire to promote the sport.
“Pakistan had a huge influence on the Taliban at that time,” he said.
The plight of female athletes
The Afghan team's importance to the Taliban is beginning to raise uncomfortable questions abroad. The Australian national cricket team announced early last year that it would boycott matches against Afghanistan in protest against the Taliban's oppression of girls and women. But during the Cricket World Cup, the Australians called off the boycott, disappointing many Afghan women and others.
Wida Omari, 35, said she hopes no foreign team will agree to play in Kabul Stadium under Taliban rule. Omari was working as the women's sports coordinator for the Kabul municipality until her team of colleagues was disbanded within days of seizing power.
She has since fled the country, but 80% of the female athletes she supervised are still in Afghanistan. “Their families accuse them of angering the Taliban when they became athletes, and now they are being pushed into marriage,” Al-Omari said. “A lot of people call me a crybaby.”
Although the Taliban-run government remains internationally isolated and subject to severe sanctions, a spokesman for the Afghanistan Cricket Board said it had recently received about $16 million from the Dubai-based International Cricket Council, with media reports suggesting that Afghan cricket could expect to receive On similar funds. Annual contributions in the coming years.
The International Criminal Court said in a statement that it “will not punish.” [Afghanistan Cricket Board]or its players to abide by the laws set by their country's government,” but they continue to advocate for women's cricket in the country. The ICC does not release public details about member funding.
In an interview, Hamdullah Nomani, the Taliban's urban development minister, said plans to build a large new cricket stadium in Kabul had been discussed at the highest levels of leadership. Although the idea of constructing a new stadium originated during the previous government, the Taliban-run government appears intent on helping to finish the project with private funding.
The government's primary concern is that the stadium may not be big enough. “There is not enough land,” Nomani said.
Lotfollah Qasim Yar and Mirwais Mohammadi contributed to this report.
