The Afghanistan cricket story is the quintessential underdog narrative — a team without a home, a side that barely existed at the stroke of the century, playing their second World Cup on a 14-run winless streak, comprehensively upending the world champions, outplaying them in every facet of the game. It’s a moving human story — of war and displacement, sportsmen learning the game in refugee camps in Pakistan, using it as both a tool of escape and a path to a better life. It’s a tale of revenge — the colonised beating the coloniser, of the still-deep wounds of Anglo-Afghan Wars and their destabilising effects. Most of all, it is a stirring story of sporting triumph, a symbolic moment in which Afghanistan announced their arrival on the grandest stage.
Afghanistan are not a rag-tag team of amateurs and semi-professionals, who after the World Cup, return to teaching in schools, or delivering posts, or fixing pipes. Most of them are full-time cricketers who globe-trot round the year, featuring in leagues, from West Indies to India, Bangladesh to the US. Take, for instance, off-spinner Mohammed Nabi — he has played for 32 T20 franchises in the world. Or their talisman, Rashid Khan, who has offered his services to 22. Add the countries they have travelled for ODI tournaments, and their passports would be thicker than those of their counterparts in more established teams. Rashid is without argument the superstar of Afghanistan cricket, the one who could stroll into any all-time T20 eleven.
Life is unpredictable in the country, but interest for the game has shot up. There is early exposure to big tournaments, access to foreign leagues and heroes like Nabi, Rashid, Najeeb and Rahmanullah Gurbaz. New ones are rising, like Fazalhaq Farooqi, Ikram Alikhil and Naveen-ul-Haq. Theirs is a fearless brand of cricket, owing as much to the hardships they endured as their exposure to highly competitive leagues. The defeat of England, thus, is a deeply symbolic moment with the potential for far-reaching consequences.
