Champions Trophy 2025: Afghanistan cricket team to ignore debate caused by boycott calls
Afghan captain Hashmatullah Shahidi said his players will ignore any potential attention that has been drawn around their debates in the championship trophy when they were in the match on Friday.
Afghanistan plays South Africa in Karachi, the first game in a group including Australia and the United Kingdom.
Three other teams called on the other three to boycott the match against Afghanistan due to the Taliban attack on women’s rights in the country.
“We can only control what’s inside the ground,” Shahidi said.
“So that’s what we do, and other things can’t put us under pressure.”
Shahidi spoke in English (his second language) at a press conference Thursday.
He also said: “As an athlete, our job is to play cricket and we don’t care what’s going on outside.”
It seems that he is referring to potential interference, not the plight of Afghan women.
Women’s participation in sports has been effectively banned since the Taliban returned to power in 2021.
In January, South African Sports Minister Gayton McKenzie thought the game should not continue, but the Protyans will play on Friday.
England will attend Australia on Saturday before meeting with Afghanistan next Wednesday. Like the South African Cricket Council, the England and Wales Cricket Council called on the International Cricket Council to respond uniformly.
The ICC requires all its members, of which Afghanistan is a national team of women, but these men are allowed to compete with or without an active official women’s side.
The position of the global governing body is that incumbent male players should not be punished for the Afghan government’s policies, and it hopes to use its position and cricket to influence changes in the country.
