A checkpoint just outside Torkham, on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, late in 2021. It is about a month since the Taliban resumed control of Afghanistan.
Stopped at the checkpoint is a dusty four-wheel-drive, with a family inside. One of their number, covered by a hijab that obscures everything but her eyes, is an Afghanistan cricketer, Firooza Amiri.
Afghanistan cricketers in Melbourne (from left): Firooza Afghan, Friba Hotak and Firooza Amiri.Credit: Simon Schluter
Firooza’s family have visas to get to Australia because of her status as a cricketer contracted to the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB). But to use the visas, her family must protect Firooza’s identity, lest she be exposed as the kind of athlete or professional no longer accepted by the Taliban regime. For no other reason than that the Taliban won’t allow females to play sport in Afghanistan.
Firooza and her family have already seen some things they will never forget. Trying to get out of Afghanistan via Kabul’s airport as the Taliban took over, they saw a stampede of refugees near the terminal, under gunfire. One young man fell in front of them, shot three times, as the terrified crowd surged towards the airport, which was being protected by NATO.
That scene was one of many in Firooza’s mind at this checkpoint and others. After turning back from the airport (where the national women’s soccer team were able to make a direct departure for Australia), the family stayed in Kabul for several weeks, until they received visas from the Australian government, after lobbying by a group of concerned volunteers, some within the cricket community.
A cover story was agreed, whereby the family were travelling to Pakistan for a hospital visit. At numerous checkpoints, that story passed muster, as paperwork was looked over and guns toted towards the 4WD. To keep her cricket status secret from the Taliban, Firooza had earlier burned everything that signified she played: uniforms, equipment, her bats.
In 2020, Afghanistan’s cricket board awarded contracts to 25 female players. Within a year, females could no longer play sport under Taliban rule.
But outside Torkham, this story came unstuck. Taliban guards argued over the fact there were no medical certificates for the hospital visit, and for a few moments it appeared that Firooza and her family would be blocked from reaching Pakistan and eventually Australia.
“When we arrived in Torkham there were Taliban asking where we were going, and when we said hospital, they were asking for medical certificates, which we didn’t have,” Firooza says now, three years on.
“Then my brother says, ‘OK, I’m a basketball player and I have a match I have to go to’. And so they said, ‘OK, you can go’, because he was a man. That was how we got into Pakistan.”
After all, there is no problem with men playing sport in Afghanistan.
A team with nowhere to play
Unlike the women’s soccer team, which managed to get to the airport in Kabul and was airlifted directly out of Afghanistan in 2021, the country’s leading women cricketers took a much slower route out of the country via Pakistan, over a period of months.
While slower and dotted with stories like Firooza Amiri’s, this did have the positive effect of meaning that most players were able to travel to Australia with family members alongside them.
Another side effect of the circuitous route taken was that about half the players settled in Canberra, with the rest moving to Melbourne, where the soccer players all came to be based.
Melbourne Victory has established a successful team of women players from Afghanistan. Pictured last year are Fatima Yousufi (left) and Adiba Ganji.Credit: Penny Stephens
It was this geographical split, as much as anything else, that created hurdles for the prospect of getting the cricket team together. The summer of 2021-22, of course, was still heavily affected by COVID-19 restrictions.
“Some went to Canberra, and then we came after them and said we’ll go to Melbourne because it’s known as a sports city,” Firooza explains. “That’s how half went to Canberra and half came here, and we didn’t have the chance to play together here. ACB were not organising us any more as a team.”
As such, local volunteers helped players find clubs while they and their families found homes, places of work and study. In Melbourne, several settled in with the Dandenong Cricket Club in the south-east, and it was on a pre-season training night in Hallam that they spoke with this masthead.
“I’ve played for different clubs, and Dandenong has been the most welcoming club for me, it’s a nice team, my coaches are very good as well,” Firooza says. “But it is the dream to play for one team together. That’s why we started playing cricket, we want to represent Afghanistan. Other countries have a national team and we want to be part of this world. Nothing can break us, we will keep going.”
‘Other countries have a national team and we want to be part of this world. Nothing can break us, we will keep going.’
Firooza Amiri
Alongside Firooza Amiri is Firooza Afghan, who arrived in Australia in 2022. At Dandenong training, her whippy medium pace stands out for its sharpness: she is an ardent fan of Mitchell Starc.
“When we took our contracts it was January 1, 2021 and we started training,” she recalls of the start of the women’s team in her homeland.
“We were working so hard to get to play, and at that time the ACB had a plan for us to play a match against Oman and Bangladesh, but then unfortunately when our country fell to the Taliban, we lost the chance to play.
“We want to train together, make a team for Afghanistan and represent Afghanistan for a national team or a refugee team. We just want to have a team and show the world we also can play cricket as women. That’s our dream and goal, to represent our country like others do.”
Afghanistan’s men’s team celebrates beating Australia in this year’s Twenty20 World Cup.Credit: Getty Images
So far, despite entreaties to the International Cricket Council, they have not been able to. In Australia and England, there has been a response of sorts supporting the Afghanistan women: a ban on bilateral matches between the two countries’ men’s teams and Afghanistan outside world cups. This stance was the subject of plenty of comment during the world Twenty20 tournament this year. Firooza Amiri, though, wants to see the men playing.
“Playing cricket and studying in Afghanistan is fundamentally a human right, and we cannot solve our problem by making another problem,” she says. “Our message has always been for the men’s team to come with us and raise their voice for the women as well. We never want them to stop playing cricket.”
Cricket Australia declined to comment for this story. The ICC has repeatedly stated that the status of the Afghanistan women’s team is a matter for the country’s cricket board. The next round of ICC meetings is due around the finale of the women’s Twenty20 World Cup, in the UAE this weekend.
The soccer solution
After the women soccer players got to Australia, they were initially set to be allotted to various clubs and to play as individuals. But it soon became clear there was a strong will to find a way for them to stay together.
Enter Melbourne Victory, the privately owned A-League men’s and women’s club.
With the full backing of the club’s board of directors, Victory football manager John Didulica oversaw a project to get the players together and training, have them registered with the world players’ union, and find a division among Victoria’s local competitions for them to play in.
“On a personal level, we had a large cohort of young girls who needed support,” Didulica says. “Not just with their football, but the personal trauma they experienced cannot be understated, and it was different for each player who has their own story and challenges.
“Building some routine and focus through football was clearly a big part of trying to support them. It wasn’t that simple though to get the team playing and training in a structured way. How do you fund and stand up a competitive team in weeks? Community sport is complex at the best of times, so working around politics and regulations and infrastructure was all pretty daunting.”
Firooza Amiri (left), Friba Hotak and Firooza Afghan are determined to represent their homeland.Credit: Simon Schluter
Unveiled as Melbourne Victory FC AWT, the team played its first games in 2022, and have twice won promotion to higher levels. For Didulica, the opportunity for the women to play together, even if not as an official national side, has kept that bigger dream alive.
“Our ultimate goal remains to get the team once again competing in FIFA competitions so that the girls can once again represent their country,” he says. “At the moment, Afghanistan refuses to submit a women’s team for competitions. We want to lobby FIFA to change this.
“This will be a long campaign – which has already been going for nearly three years. If the team didn’t stay together through this period and show the unity and commitment that they have, it would almost be impossible to be pursuing this campaign. The team has enabled shows of unity every single week as well as keeping the players fit and motivated to continue as footballers when it may have been so much easier to walk away.
“This visibility and this preparation means the team is ready to take the international stage and has a vehicle – a face – to show to FIFA to continue to fight for recognition. If the players had been separated and left to their own devices, it makes that step so much harder and more distant.”
This example has shown the cricketers what is possible.
“The soccer team are organised as a refugee team, they are playing matches as a refugee team,” Firooza Amiri says. “Previously we requested the ICC to play as the Afghanistan national cricket team, and the ICC rejected that because we are not in Afghanistan any more, and also the ACB are under the Taliban regime and don’t want to have women.
“So if we have the chance, we are definitely going to play as one team here. We can have matches as a refugee team, we can potentially go to the Olympics as a refugee team as well. That’s what we’re looking for.”
‘The most heartbreaking thing’
Cricket teams can comprise tight bunches of friends who hang together on and off the field, or they can be loose collectives that go their separate ways as soon as the last ball is bowled.
Some Australian sides have overplayed their closeness when cliques and fissures clearly existed. But the uniting element of it all is the chance to play together – a cricket team is, in the end, assembled above all other reasons to play the game.
Since the Afghanistan players arrived in Australia across 2021 and 2022, the women have lost that unifying element. They are refugees in a new country, without the chance to get together to perform the skills which brought them here in the first place.
After numerous pleas to the ICC went unheard, they have remained determined, but are saddened by this state of limbo. It is one thing to be grateful for a new start, but quite another to pine for what has been lost.
“You can’t hear their story and not be filled with so many emotions. It makes you feel inspired but also angry, sad, all of those things,” says Emma Gallagher, who has coached several of the players at Dandenong.
“You can feel really powerless, but what we can do as a cricket club is hopefully give them somewhere they can belong and get some hope at least in improving their cricket skills when that dream is to play for Afghanistan.
“For me personally, I’m a big believer in the power of sport, and I’ve benefited a lot from it in terms of finding my own place to belong. I can’t imagine being somewhere else and finding the balance between being grateful for what you have and where you are, but also feeling a strong connection to Afghanistan.”
Firooza Amiri senses the frustration among her teammates is growing, and she wonders about whether some may leave cricket entirely.
“The most heartbreaking thing is that we came here and didn’t get that support from ICC,” she says. “Cricket Australia gave us as much support as they could, but we didn’t get international support. With all the time that is going, the girls are losing hope to play cricket any more. When you go to another country, it’s not easy to get into that country and start playing cricket.
“Also, they are not all playing in Dandenong, they are in different areas, different cities. Since we arrived here, they are feeling hopeless, they are thinking there’s not going to be a way they can play for Afghanistan.
“But when there is no Afghanistan team, they are not going to keep playing. They are thinking about going to other sports maybe, and they are working to send money back to their families in Afghanistan. I know Australia is my second home, but still I want to play for Afghanistan.”
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