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England’s cricket team plays Afghanistan in the present day, and let’s not mince phrases – it’s an absolute shame.
It’s a humiliation to the game, a stain on the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), and a transparent instance of cricket’s governing our bodies burying their heads within the sand in terms of real-world issues.
Let’s begin with the apparent: Afghanistan is at the moment dominated by the Taliban, a regime that has systematically erased women’s rights and turned the nation into a worldwide pariah. But right here we’re, sending England cricketers onto the sector as if this had been simply one other routine fixture. It isn’t. It’s a tacit endorsement of a regime that doesn’t even enable girls to play sport – any sport.
Take into consideration that for a second. The Afghanistan Cricket Board is basically run underneath Taliban rule, an organisation that actively excludes half the inhabitants from collaborating in any significant manner. And but, the ICC and ECB, the governing our bodies of cricket that continually parade their supposed dedication to equality, seem joyful to let this slide.
Punishment for the crime of being feminine in Afghanistan is relentless: no entry to training, no entry to significant well being and maternity companies, no speaking, no singing, condemned to life in a darkened room. Half the inhabitants have systematically disappeared from Afghan society. They’re unvoiced and invisible.
So, what concerning the Afghanistan girls’s workforce? Sure, consider it or not, regardless of having simply mentioned that girls should not permitted to play sports activities in Afghanistan, there may be certainly an Afghan women’s cricket team. There must be, in keeping with the ICC’s guidelines, which state that each nation that has a males’s workforce should even have a girls’s workforce.
And the place are these courageous sportswomen? Properly, whereas their male counterparts are allowed to play at worldwide occasions, the Afghan girls’s workforce has been pressured to live in exile in Australia. Presumably, they’re in fixed concern for his or her lives and unable to play the game they love on the identical phrases as the boys from their house nation.
So how, and why, is the ICC even permitting Afghan males to take part in a global event when it seems to be in direct contravention of the governing physique’s rule that states each nation needs to be operating a girls’s workforce?
The ECB has resisted stress to boycott the match, saying it believes unilateral motion just isn’t the way in which ahead. This view has been backed by the British authorities regardless of stress from politicians and human rights teams.
This isn’t nearly precept, though that alone needs to be sufficient to name off this match. It’s about consistency. South Africa was banned from worldwide cricket for many years as a consequence of apartheid. Why, then, is a rustic that enforces gender apartheid allowed to compete with out consequence?
The hypocrisy is staggering. And what does it say about England, a rustic that preaches inclusivity and social justice however is keen to compete towards representatives of a rustic the place girls aren’t even allowed to set foot on the pitch?
If England’s governing our bodies had any spine, they’d have refused to let the match go forward. If the ICC had any rules, Afghanistan would have been sidelined till the essential rights of all its residents had been revered. As an alternative, we’re witnessing the sport’s establishments bend over backwards to accommodate a very unacceptable state of affairs. It’s cowardly and shameful, and it makes a mockery of each ethical stance the cricketing world claims to uphold.
This match ought to by no means have been scheduled, and by enjoying it, the ECB and the ICC are complicit in normalising the unacceptable. For the sake of cricket’s integrity and, extra importantly, of all those that are voiceless under Afghanistan’s current regime – this charade must cease.
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