Authored By Swayambhu Mukherjee:
How many of us are familiar with the rapid progress made by Afghanistan’s national cricket team? There's been an inspirational story, one that hardly finds mention in the popular media of today. In 2001, the year they formed the cricket board, Afghanistan was 90th in the world, the worst at the time. By 2010 they had made it to the World Twenty20. Their performance in the world meet was also quite commendable. What is more amazing is that they achieved this even though there was a real lack of proper infrastructure to support and nurture their talent.
Most of the players first took to the game in refugee camps in Pakistan, a case in point being Mr. Hamid Hassan. Most of the players usually played the game on bumpy, dusty, uneven pitches. They used bricks for wickets, old, cracked bats and tennis balls. And they still made it to World Twenty20. Support for and popularity of the game is also spreading in Afghanistan.
Tim Albone, one of the makers of “Out of the Ashes”, a documentary chronicling the rise of Afghanistan’s national cricket team, had this to say about the team's triumphant return to Kabul: "Soldiers fired guns in the air in celebration, people hung out of windows of cars and screamed around the city's streets and the players were treated like heroes. The next day I left Jalalabad for Kabul. I was travelling in a car with only a driver. On the trip we came across some police who stopped us; in the road were blood stains and spent bullet cartridges - only minutes before, we were told, the police had been in a gun battle with the Taliban, some had been killed. It was a lucky escape." (See this.) This should be of some interest to India, more so because it is now trying to increase its presence in Afghanistan and capture popular imagination. What is worrying from the Indian point of view is that right now, cricket in Afghanistan is heavily dependent on the support that it receives from Pakistan.
For example, Mr. Rashid Latif, a former captain and wicketkeeper of Pakistan’s national cricket team, had recently been appointed the batting coach of Afghanistan’s national cricket team. Afghanistan’s national cricket team is currently coached by Mr. Kabir Khan, a former fast bowler who once played for Pakistan’s national cricket team. Mr. Latif’s first training camp will be in Abbottabad, near Islamabad. (See this.) There is no Indian involvement in the development of cricket in Afghanistan. This means that the rogue state of Pakistan gets one more tool to capture the Afghan popular imagination. Public memory being fickle, people will soon forget that it was the Taliban supported by Pakistan that had brutally outlawed all sporting activities in that troubled country. The BCCI, meanwhile, has again decided that it is just not interested in furthering national interest. Mr. Sharad Pawar will find time to replace one scamster with another in the governing council of IPL, and he will be busy wooing the PCB to ensure that Mr. John Howard is kept away from the ICC. He will, however, do nothing to ensure that India that India has a stake in the development of cricket in Afghanistan.
This would have ensured that India gains a reputation as a friendly country, eager to participate actively in the reconstruction of Afghanistan. India itself has been the recipient of a number of such overtures from the erstwhile USSR, during the 1960s and the 1970s. And the BCCI, being the richest cricketing body in the world, was ideally placed to promote cricket in Afghanistan by providing infrastructure and other facilities. It could have, for example, invited Afghan teams to participate in India’s domestic cricket tournaments and opened the doors of the National Cricket Academy to talented youngsters from that country. It could also have scheduled a series of games with Afghanistan’s national cricket team, keeping in mind the fact that their coach had gone on record requesting Asian countries for more games. (See this.) Finally, it could treat cricketers from Afghanistan (and Ireland, to promote cricket in that country teeming with talented but under-paid cricketers) on a par with domestic players. That should help them gain more exposure in the shortest format of cricket and provide them with an opportunity to earn a decent livelihood. However, the BCCI is just not interested in doing anything that will promote cricket in Afghanistan, or our national interest, it seems. (For a related post on the BCCI and its lack of interest in anything but its own commercial interests, see this.)
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