Uncertainty And Pain Of Afghan Cricketers After The Taliban Took Over.
The calm of the empty stadium was a surreal contrast with the scene a few kilometers to the north. Tens of thousands of Afghans at Kabul Airport desperately tried to escape the evacuation flight.
The break of bat on ball echoes around Kabul’s worldwide arena as Afghanistan’s top cricketers plan for their next visit – only days after the nation tumbled to the Taliban.
The quiet of the unfilled arena is a strange difference to scenes only a couple kilometers north, where a huge number of Afghans at Kabul air terminal are frantically attempting to escape on clearing flights.
Following the staggering triumph of the hardline Islamists, large numbers of the major parts in cricket-distraught Afghanistan’s dearest public group are thinking that its hard to zero in on sport.
“The dread is there in their eyes, in their voices, even in their messages,” pace bowler Naveen-ul-Haq said of his partners in Kabul during a radio meeting broadcast at the end of the week.
“The Taliban have said (they) will not be alarming any athlete, yet no one knows,” added Haq, talking from the West Indies where he plays in the Caribbean Premier League.
The arrival of the Taliban has started inescapable dread in Afghanistan and in the global local area, resuscitating recollections of their merciless first spell in power from 1996 to 2001 when they forced a cruel form of Islamic law.
They restricted most types of diversion – including many games – and arenas served as open execution settings.
Sports the Taliban permitted were completely controlled, and were for just for men to play and watch.
They wouldn’t fret cricket, in any case, and the game conceived hundreds of years prior on the battlegrounds of England is mainstream among Taliban fear mongers as well.
That has done little to facilitate the feelings of trepidation of numerous players, for whom the fall of the nation is about much more than the game.
“I appeal to the heads of the world; kindly don’t release Afghanistan into turmoil,” previous public commander Mohammad Nabi tweeted days before the fall of Kabul, as the Taliban were a quickly catching area.
“We need your help. We need harmony.”
‘More than a game’
Cricket was scarcely known in the country until the mid 2000s, and its hazardous ascent in prevalence was connected with struggle – the game was gotten in Pakistan by Afghan outcasts who then, at that point cultivated it in their nation of origin.
Be that as it may, the public group has partaken in a brilliant ascent on the worldwide scene from that point forward, acquiring desired Test status in 2017 and presently positioned among the best 10 sides on the planet in the one-day and Twenty20 arrangements.
Over the most recent 20 years, it has additionally arisen as an incredible image of public solidarity in a nation riven by common conflict and ethnic clash.
“On the off chance that you discover positive news, on the off chance that you see individuals glad, it’s just cricket… that carries it to the country. Afghanistan,” Haq told that.
“It’s in excess of a game for Afghanistan’s kin.”
That association with public character was noticeable on Afghanistan’s autonomy day – August 19, not exactly seven days after the fall of Kabul.
Afghan cricketers checked it by tweeting pictures and emoticons of the tri-shading public banner, which the Taliban have supplanted with their white standard in regions under their influence.
All-rounder Samiullah Shinwari had before tweeted a photograph with the date of the Taliban takeover of Kabul – August 15 – and the words: “The day Afghans lost their nation and the entire world just watched.”
‘Difficult to focus’
For the Afghan players as of now outside the country, there are fears for their friends and family back home.
The group of Rashid Khan – Afghanistan’s greatest cricket star – can’t leave the nation, as indicated by previous England star Kevin Pietersen, who addressed him last week during a competition in Britain.
“We had a long visit here on the limit discussing it and (Khan) is concerned: he can’t get his family out of Afghanistan,” Pietersen revealed to Sky Sports.
There are positive signs. On Sunday, the Afghanistan Cricket Board tweeted photos of its recently reappointed executive to show it would be the same old thing.
Notwithstanding the vulnerability, Afghanistan’s cricket specialists have said their impending series against Pakistan, to be played in Sri Lanka, will go on.
With no business flights working from Afghanistan, an authority said the group would head to Pakistan and fly out from that point.
However, in any event, for the individuals who can play away from Afghanistan, for example, Naveen-ul-Haq in the West Indies, the pictures from home are hard to disregard.
“You forget about it briefly to zero in on cricket yet it hops into your psyche once more,” he told the BBC.
“I can’t say that I will be completely centered around playing possibly cricket since you can’t when you see your nation like that.”
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