By Ty Joplin
Rashid Khan started playing cricket in an agricultural region of Afghanistan called Nangarhar with his 10 siblings.
He quickly learned the basics of how to bowl and bat, and started playing more competitively. After a little while, he was noticed by management of the Afghanistan national cricket team and made his international debut against Zimbabwe when he was just 17 years old.
Fast forward a few short years, and he’s revolutionizing the sport: his unmatched ability to read the game and confuse other teams with his mysterious spin is confounding even the best, most resourced nations.
He’s outsmarting top-ranked opposition, he’s rated as the number one bowler globally in several formats of the game and franchise teams around the world are bidding over each other to get him a place on their squads. He’s dominating players who were almost raised to be professional cricketers; people who were brought up through competitive sports programs at schools and academies, people who come from generations of pro cricketers.
He’s played for professional teams in Pakistan, England, the West Indies, India, South Africa, and Australia. Players and coaches agree Rashid brings an ‘X’ factor to their teams that gives them the winning edge.
And he hasn’t even turned 21 yet.
Sachin Tendulkar, often considered one of the greatest cricket players of all time, recently tweeted that he considers Khan one of the sport’s best talents right now after seeing him play in India’s premier league final at just 19 years of age. Rashid explained later that he was in such a state of shock, it took him nearly 2 hours to respond to the shoutout.
Rashid Khan’s stunning success is just one among many in the rise of Afghanistan cricket. The national team’s captain along with other star players started learning the game in under-serviced, crowded refugee camps where a landed helicopter served as a makeshift locker room. They are now some of the most sought-after superstars in the world’s second most popular sport.
How did this happen?
The constant wars in Afghanistan has slowly eaten the country and hollowed it out. War and violence have embedded themselves into the psyche of successive generations of Afghans.
But one unlikely thing to come from the constant wars and displacement is a newfound love for the sport of cricket. After just a few years of formal organization with a national team, Afghanistan is one of the most successful in the world, and its players are inspiring a country that’s been relegated as a permanent war-zone by the rest of the world.
Al Bawaba spoke with Michael Kugelman in the hopes of understanding the rise of Afghanistan Cricket and what their national team means as a symbol for the embattled country. Michael Kugelman is a Deputy Director and Senior Associate in the South Asia Program at the Wilson Center, a think-tank in Washington DC.
Michael Kugelman (Wilson Center)
“The success of the cricket team is somethings that's bought incredibly amounts of joy and patriotism to a country that’s been riven not just by conflict, but by many divides,” Kugelman tells Al Bawaba.
“It’s really united a divided country.”
The beginning of Afghanistan’s rise in cricket today starts with millions of displaced Afghans who trekked to Pakistan in search of refuge. Many of them found themselves living in Peshawar, a city on the border with Afghanistan. There, Afghans were exposed to the national sport of Pakistan and the passion of millions; cricket.
Throughout the 1980s and 90s, Afghans picked up cricket and played in the same style as Pakistani cricketers with an emphasis on strong, wristy shots on dusty, dry pitches. As Afghans trickled back into Afghanistan and others lived in refugee camps in Pakistan, cricket became one of the best and cheapest ways to pass the time.
Afghani cricketers played on dusty pitches like the ones inside the Khurasan Refugee Camp in Pakistan. “We learned cricket here and we took this cricket with us to Afghanistan, and now Afghanistan has a team which plays on a world level and the entire world has recognised it,” Abdul Wahid, a refugee tells a reporter from AFP.
The captain of the Afghanistan national team, Ashgar Afghan, along with several star players like Shapoor Zadran and Mohammed Nabi, all got their starts playing in refugee camps, where players often have no equipment, wear no shoes and have limited access to food and water.
“The success of the cricket team is somethings that's bought incredibly amounts of joy and patriotism to a country that’s been riven not just by conflict, but by many divides,” Kugelman tells Al Bawaba.
“It’s really united a divided country.”
Afghan fans cheer on their national cricket team (AFP/FILE)
The biggest reason why the cricket team has been received so warmly inside Afghanistan, according to Kugelman, is the simple that that many poor Afghans see themselves in the team’s start players.
“Many Afghans see themselves in these cricket stars... Especially the young cricket players, they don’t come from privilege. They come from poor families. Many of them were displaced from Afghanistan and spent a lot of time in Pakistan,” Kugelman says.
“And I think that’s very galvanicing and inspiring for many Afghans that like to think when they’re taking in this cricket team, it’s like they’re looking in the mirror and seeing something of what they’ve experienced themselves.”
To listen to the full conversation, click here:
