Two groups of women are playing cricket matches in Melbourne on Thursday – with two very different dreams on the line. At the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia will go face to face with England with the prize of a 16-0 Ashes whitewash up for grabs. Only a few miles up the road, at Junction Oval, an Afghanistan XI are playing a 20-over match against a Cricket Without Borders Charity XI, their first match under the Afghanistan banner since the Taliban seized power in 2021 and they were forced to flee for their lives.
For the Afghan women, there is no Ashes trophy at stake: instead, they are playing for the chance to salvage something from the ashes of the dream of representing their country at cricket, a dream they feared they had left behind when they fled their home nation more than three years ago.
Benafsha Hashimi and Sofia Yosofazi are two of the women involved. “I feel like we are making history,” Yosofazi said. “It’s the first step to represent Afghanistan, and have everyone know that Afghan women can play cricket.”
“We are opening the door to at least have a match that tells the world that we are here, and we have Afghan women who are interested in playing cricket,” Hashimi added. “It’s a really, really good feeling.”
The pair are among a group of 25 who were honoured to receive the first ever professional contracts for women from the Afghanistan Cricket Board in 2020. But a year later the Taliban returned to power and immediately banned all women’s sport. The dream quickly became a nightmare: the contracts placed them directly in the Taliban’s firing line.
The majority were able to escape to Australia, alongside their families. Many did not speak a word of English, but cricket has proved a universal language. Olivia Thornton, the chief executive of Cricket ACT, praised the support they have received. “The way in which the Australian cricket community have wrapped their arms around these girls, and have used cricket as a vehicle to help them integrate, has been really wonderful,” she said.
Half the women settled in Melbourne, and half in Canberra. Initially, given the need for privacy surrounding their escape, they had to play under the same pseudonym. “There was an influx of Smiths in our cricket competitions,” Thornton recalled.
Now, at last, the group are coming back together to play for the first time – complete with brand new cricket shirts designed by Hashimi, which bear a tulip on the front (the national flower of Afghanistan) and their real names on the back.
The England captain, Heather Knight – who met the players at the MCG on Wednesday – labelled them “inspirational”. “The fact that they’re playing as an Afghan team is really special,” she said.
The match comes amid the ongoing row about whether England and South Africa should boycott their forthcoming men’s Champions Trophy matches against Afghanistan. Amid a deteriorating situation for women in Afghanistan – women can no longer access education and are banned from speaking in public – a number of campaign groups have called for the boycott. However, the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and the chief executive of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Richard Gould, have both said the onus should be on the International Cricket Council (ICC) to take collective action.
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The ICC has so far failed to penalise the Afghanistan Cricket Board, a stance in contravention of its own rules, which state that full members must have a women’s team. They have also failed to engage with the women’s team. Hashimi’s message for it was clear. “Please wake up. We are here. Support us. When I came here we kept sending them emails and letters, and they kept ignoring us, which is very disappointing.
“We are from Afghanistan, the country where women have always been seen lower and told they are nothing. Please don’t do that with us.”
Benafsha is due to start a degree in sport management later this year, while Yosofazi dreams of being a fashion designer. But both players also hope that this is just the start of their journeys representing Afghanistan on the cricket pitch – even if that does have to be done in exile.
“When the game finishes, we don’t want it to end,” Hashimi said. “We want to go further and have other matches in Australia. We’re glad to have Cricket Australia with us – now we hope to get some support from ICC.
“We will try to be the best, to tell Afghan girls that they can do it,” she added. Whether or not those dreams can become a reality is now in the hands of the ICC.
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