The rise of Afghanistan's men's team has been "one of the great cricket stories of this century", said The Telegraph.
The national side has secured high-profile victories against England, Pakistan and Sri Lanka over the past few years, and against all the odds beat Australia in the T20 World Cup last summer, reaching the semi-finals for the first time after beating Bangladesh.
But Afghanistan's place on the world cricket stage is becoming increasingly controversial. International Cricket Council (ICC) rules require member nations to have both a men's and a women's team, but one of the Taliban's first acts after retaking power in 2021 was to disband Afghanistan's nascent women's squad. Most of its players fled to Australia, where they live in exile. Now England is "under pressure" to boycott its fixture against Afghanistan in the ICC Champions Trophy group stage on 26 February, said the Daily Mirror, in protest at the Taliban's "appalling treatment of women".
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'Playing ball with apartheid'
While Afghanistan remains a full ICC member, Australia and England play against the team during World Cup fixtures, but both countries have declined to schedule any domestically controlled bilateral series with the Afghanistan side, in protest against the Taliban's ban on women's cricket.
Now activists including the Women's Rights Network are calling on Keir Starmer to extend that and support a "blanket boycott of Afghanistan across all sports". "How in all conscience can this game go ahead?" said Janice Turner in The Times. Afghanistan is clearly in breach of ICC rules, but more to the point the Taliban is practising "gender apartheid". When South Africa did the same "along racial lines, it rightly suffered sporting boycotts". The Taliban love cricket, so boycotting it would be a "rare way to sanction its monstrous regime", Turner said. "Shame on any Englishman who plays ball with apartheid next month."
'The only source of happiness'
However, "most Afghan women players" oppose such a boycott, said The Economist. Despite a "paltry budget", the men's team has become "wildly popular", and female cricketers have argued that a ban would "deprive their compatriots of a rare source of pride and pleasure".
It would indeed remove a source of "collective pleasure from a beleaguered nation and its weary population", said journalism professor Richard Thomas on The Conversation. Team captain Rashid Khan describes cricket as "the only source of happiness back home".
The outgoing ICC chair, Greg Barclay, last month accused Cricket Australia of hypocrisy over their bilateral series boycott and backed the ICC's decision to allow Afghanistan's men's team to compete. "If you really want to make a political statement, don't play them in a World Cup," he said. "I don't think it would make a jot of difference to the ruling party there to kick them out [of the ICC]," he added.
The team's success also provides a platform for players to speak out. Last month two of the men's team called on the Taliban to lift the ban on women training as doctors and nurses, which had been "one of the last remaining loopholes" available under the overall ban on higher education, said The Guardian.
"It is essential for our sisters and mothers to have access to care provided by medical professionals who truly understand their needs," Khan posted on social media. "Providing education to all is not just a societal responsibility but a moral obligation deeply rooted in our faith and values."
