AGENCY
NEW DELHI, Apr 14
The 25 Afghan women cricketers initially contracted by the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) in 2020 could be the first beneficiaries of the ICC’s new support initiative, announced after their board meetings at the weekend. Nineteen of those 25 players are residing in Australia, and have support from the organisation Pitch Our Future, which hopes to work with the ICC in developing the rollout of a funding and high-performance programme for these players.
ESPNcricinfo has learnt that Pitch Our Future will provide the ICC with a full list of the names of the formerly-contracted players, including those in Canada and the UK, as well as guidelines on a player-development programme which includes an education and a life-skills programme. Pitch Our Future was launched after an Afghan women’s XI played Cricket without Borders in Melbourne on January 30. It already has a fund-raising campaign, a budget for the next three years, and plans for more matches and tours, including a possible trip to the Women’s World Cup as spectators.
ESPNcricinfo has established that the Afghan cricketers were not aware that there were any plans by the ICC to assist them, and had not had any communication from the ICC in the lead-up to their announcement of their initiative. The cricketers have been writing to the ICC for at least two years, most recently with a request to be recognised as a refugee team, which went unanswered.
The ICC previously had an Afghanistan task force which aimed to address the issue of the ACB’s non-compliance with Full Member requirements to have a women’s team, but they were hamstrung by the rules of their own organisation.
As a member-run body, the only way the ICC could recognise the Afghan women was if the ACB first did the same.
The issue was in a state of inertia until last weekend when the ICC’s women’s cricket committee put forth a proposal for a task force and dedicated funding. The board voted in favour of the proposal in the majority, while the ACB neither endorsed nor opposed the initiative. The task force will be formed in the coming weeks, and will consider issues like where training camps will be held, and how matches will be organised. However, this does not yet create a pathway for the Afghanistan women’s team to compete at an international level as they are not being officially recognised by the ICC or the ACB.
It is also understood that the ICC’s willingness to engage with Afghanistan’s women cricketers comes as cricket prepares to make its Olympic comeback after 128 years at LA 2028. It was recently announced that the cricket competition would be a six-team affair, and while it is not clear how qualification will be decided, the International Olympic Committee has a strict gender-equality principle in place.
That means that all federations and their members must adhere to gender-equality guidelines, irrespective of whether particular members have qualified or not. FIFA, the world’s governing body for football, has pledged similar financial support to Afghanistan’s former women’s football team, who are all resident in Australia.
ESPNcricinfo, meanwhile, has asked the ICC for further details, including the source of the funds for their initiative. Pitch Our Future currently runs a crowd-funding campaign, but any more money could come from an amount ring-fenced for women from the ACB’s disbursements or elsewhere.
It is also not known what the extent of the BCCI, the ECB and CA’s involvement in this initiative will be after they were named as partner boards. Currently, neither the ECB nor CA is willing to play against Afghanistan in bilateral men’s cricket in protest over the lack of women’s rights in the country, but one source believes this collaboration could open the door for that to change.
