CHENNAI: As Azmatullah Omarzai produced late fireworks to help Afghanistan men post 273 runs against Australia in the ICC Champions Trophy match on Friday afternoon in Lahore, among the thousands of fans in the stands cheering for them was an Afghan girl. Holding a placard above her head, the young girl was sending a message to not just her country, but the cricketing world. The English translation of the pashto message read along the lines of: "I'm an Afghan girl, I want to become a doctor. Please don't oppress us and take away my dreams."
That young girl in the stands of the Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore on Saturday is not alone. About 10,500 kilometres away, in Melbourne and Canberra, Australia, several women cricketers from Afghanistan were staying up in the night to watch the men's team do what they have been stripped of and fighting for — play cricket for their country — since the Taliban took over in 2021.
In the time since Taliban came to power in Afghanistan, women have been banned from playing sports, secondary education for girls is suspended beyond sixth grade, they are prohibited from entering public baths, public parks, gyms, sports clubs and amusement parks, banned from university education and as late as December 2024, Taliban announced a new decree according to which new buildings should not have windows through which it is possible to see “the courtyard, kitchen, neighbour’s well and other places usually used by women”.
“Seeing women working in kitchens, in courtyards or collecting water from wells can lead to obscene acts,” according to the decree posted by government spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid on social media platform X.
According to a United Nations report, 80 per cent of school-aged girls and young women, accounting for about 2.5 million people, were out of school as of 2023. The UN has termed the situation of women in the country as gender apartheid with a real threat to the lives of women in Afghanistan on a day-to-day basis.
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Growing up in the oasis city of Herat in the western part of Afghanistan, Firooza Amiri did not like cricket. Football was the popular sport in her city. It was Amiri's sister who liked cricket and made sure it was on the television all the time. At some point, Amiri gave in, wanting to know what the fuss was all about. The moment she picked up the bat in hand, she was in love. It did not take long for her to go from there to a national selection camp in Kabul which led to the then Afghanistan Cricket Board handing her a contract among other 23 cricketers in 2020.
From that day, they had one dream. Donning the blue Afghanistan jersey and playing cricket at the global stage. It was a dream they had been living for. But in August 2021, it all came down crashing. With the Taliban inching towards capturing Herat, Amiri was at home with her four siblings and parents not knowing what to do. Sitting with her family in her grandmother’s home, having tea, when her older aunt came and announced the Taliban take over, Amiri’s heart sank.
“I went into shock,” Amiri recalls in a conversation with this daily. “I was completely in shock for a couple of days. Taliban, they are a terrorist group and how hard is living in a situation where they are in the regime. So, I was worried so much about how am I going to still survive here? Am I going to go somewhere?,” her thoughts lingered.
Nobody is crazy enough to be a national player and leave everything behind. There was a must that we leave Afghanistan and there was no choice. There was a political thing going on in Afghanistan that we never know what's going to happen for players and there's no organisation behind us.
Firooza Amiri, Afghanistan cricketer
Amiri wasn’t the only one. Every Afghan woman, including cricketers and footballers, were going through a similar situation. From Amiri to Nahida Sapan to Benafsha Hashimi to every sportswoman, they are feared for their life. They know what awaited them under the Taliban regime. Their scorecards were burnt, medals were thrown away, bats were destroyed in an attempt to ensure their and their families’ safety.
“We burnt all our cricket stuff. I got my jersey, the first one that I got with the national camp. I was wearing it under my dresses because the Taliban cannot see it. But everything else, my medals, my certificates and everything, I burnt. They're all gone. Obviously, at that time, I was only thinking about my family. Because as I said, my family was so supportive of me. The only thing that I was worried about was I don't want anything to happen to them because of me. I was just thinking about safety and just leaving Afghanistan,” Amiri recalls.
That is when word spread about a chance to leave the country and seek refuge in Australia. Hasimi had gotten into touch with former Australian cricketer Mel Jones through a senior Indian journalist in Sharda Ugra to see if there was even a slightest chance of getting out of Afghanistan. Jones got in touch with Emma Staples, lecturer at Victoria University now and was Consultant to the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation for Victoria state government in 2021, and Dr Catherine Ordway, an Assistant Professor in Sport Management at the University of Canberra, and they got the ball rolling.
While words do little justice to the enormity of the task they had at hand, slowly but steadily, things started happening. As many as 19 cricketers and their families, coming up to more than 135 people, were looking to get a visa to Australia. But for that, they had to enter Pakistan first. And every single player had a different version of innumerable struggles while living in fear for their lives to make it happen. For Amiri, the wait was longer as she had to travel to Kabul, stay there for a month while changing hotels every few days before eventually driving down to the border. At multiple checkposts they had to tell different stories while maintaining that they are travelling to Pakistan for her mother’s treatment.
At one checkpoint near Torkham, they were stopped for the lack of medical documents. Not knowing what to do, her brother told the Taliban that he is a basketball player, taking his sick mother and family with him. Because he was a man, they were let go. After 14 days of quarantine in Pakistan and some time in Dubai, Amiri’s family finally landed in Melbourne. When she came out of the airport, while being relieved, she felt helpless. They did not know the language, nor did they have a home to live in.
Even as they were trying to figure out their livelihood and education for themselves, sisters and brothers, cricket never left them. The moment their quarantine was over, Amiri found herself in a shop, picking up a bat and feeling it in her hands. “You won't believe it. But once we finished the quarantine, the first day I saw Emma and the second day we went to get all our cricket bats and cricket kit bags. I was like, okay, this is all we need,” she says.
That was in late 2021. In the three and a half years, Amiri and her teammates have made Melbourne and Canberra their home. Amiri completed her diploma in sports and business and interned with Cricket Australia for nine months while coaching cricket part-time at the North Alphington Cricket Club. She laughs at how much her younger siblings have become Australian in the way they speak and learn and be around with friends in school.
Even as they tried to get their lives back on track, Amiri, Sapan, Hashimi and her teammates never let go of their dream — to play cricket for Afghanistan. They wrote to the International Cricket Council multiple times in the last three years with no avail. According to the ICC constitution, for a country to be a full-member nation, they have to have both men and women’s teams. However, Afghanistan remains one despite not having a women's team, while men continue to take part in global events.
“It's been three years. ICC didn't see any women's team in Afghanistan. Why still, they're breaking their own rules and they're sending their money back home in Afghanistan. ICC is one of the organizations that promote gender equality and they promote and celebrate equality, but I don't know which equality they are celebrating because we as a team left everything behind and came to Australia and lost everything. That wasn't by choice, we never had a choice to leave everything behind. Otherwise, nobody is crazy enough to be a national player and leave everything behind. There was a must that we leave Afghanistan and there was no choice. There was a political thing going on in Afghanistan that we never know what's going to happen for players and there's no organisation behind us.
“I think for all of the team members, boycotting the men's team won't make any difference. We don't know what's going to be beyond the boycott. We are a team, we don't want to make any political statement anywhere. But the ICC never agreed to talk to us. We understand if they boycott the men's team, they're going to make a difference and build a team for women's and equality in Afghanistan. But what I think the stakeholders and the countries and governing bodies like Australia, England, they have that power to, I think, talk to the ICC and put that pressure on ICC to recognise us as a team or as a refugee team. That's what we want, rather than going towards men's team and find the other ways, I think go straight to the ICC and talk through that we must recognise the women's team, if they cannot be as Afghanistan women's team, because we are not in our country anymore, we can make a refugee team, because we are refugees in Australia, so that's, I think, as simple as that, if we put the pressure on ICC, that can make a difference,” explains Amiri.
As recently as February 2025, the ICC said in a statement to the BBC that it "remains engaged with the situation in Afghanistan, with the wellbeing and opportunities of players as our top priority". ICC Chair Jay Shah was quoted saying. “We are committed to supporting cricket development through the Afghanistan Cricket Board while recognising the challenges facing Afghan women's cricket, including the concerns of players living in exile. The ICC is also reviewing certain communications concerning Afghanistan women's cricket and exploring how they can be supported within ICC's legal and constitutional framework. Our focus is on constructive dialogue and viable solutions that safeguard the best interests of all Afghan cricketers."
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Even as they continue to fight for their right to play, the team finally got to live their dream on January 30 at the Junction Oval in Melbourne when Afghanistan Women’s XI played against Cricket Without Borders XI — a T20 match organised by Cricket Australia.
Led by Jones, the ‘Pitch Our Future’ initiative is set up to crowd fund and support the playing, mental and physical needs of the young Afghan women so that they can compete on a regular basis as a team. Aiming to raise AUD$1.5m, the initiative will fund an initial 3-year program that will support English Language Certification, High School and Tertiary Education scholarships, specialised cricket coaching and support (including dietician and mental health support), increased cricket playing opportunities and high-performance pathways.
Amiri sees this as the beginning of a long road ahead. Their fight is not just about them playing cricket for Afghanistan but securing the safety and livelihood of millions of women back home and away from the country like the young girl who was in the stands of the Gaddafi Stadium on Friday.
“For all of us as a group, we want to play for Afghanistan, and also we want to make sure that our next generation are not facing the same challenge that we are facing today. It might look easy for somebody who's hearing, but for somebody who's gone through everything, these three years were so hard. More than living everything, this journey was so much harder than what we all thought. More people listen to what we are saying in 30 minutes, but what we have experienced, nobody can imagine and feel it.
“We just want to make sure that our next generation is not facing the same challenge that we are facing. We want justice, we want equality in Afghanistan. We don't want our girls to leave their dreams just because there's no opportunity for them. We want to make sure that every girl who dreams to play cricket can play cricket in Afghanistan.”