The ‘I Like’ and ‘Red Hearts’ reached tens of thousands in just a few minutes. How, moreover, to disagree with the request that Rashid Khan, the most famous and strong Afghan cricket champion (who plays in the Lahore Qalandars in the Pakistani Super League) has spread moved via Twitter after the bloody and tragic attack on the Kabul airport ? “Kabul is bleeding once again! Stop killing the Afghans, please! ” tweeted the cricket star. And if his appeal is unfortunately falling on deaf ears so far, the thousands of followers testify to how vast the echo of those words can be, and how significant the representativeness that the national cricket team can have in a country once again on the brink of civil war and the abyss of the humanitarian crisis.
Political interest
The National team should have taken the field shortly, also in view of the World Cup scheduled for next October. But the matches scheduled against Pakistan in Sri Lanka at the beginning of September were first repositioned in Pakistan itself, then definitively postponed to a later date due to the obvious, objective logistical difficulties and the equally understandable “emotional state” of the national team players ( and the tragic terrorist attack in Kabul had not yet occurred …).
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But despite all the new Taliban regime that has returned to power in Afghanistan after twenty years has hastened to make the world understand that cricket (a discipline very widespread in the former British colonies in Central and South Asia) will not only be tolerated, but rather encouraged by the “new-old” political-religious course that has regained control of the country.
A symbolic image of this stance? A few days (or rather, perhaps better to say, a few hours …) after the capture of the capital, a Taliban delegation was accompanied to the headquarters of the Afghan Cricket Federation by the former captain of the National team Ashagar Stanikzai; “Foray” shortly followed by a further meeting with the same players of the representative (at least those not involved in the much richer foreign leagues). As if – to give a hypothetical example – in such a situation transposed to Italy, the new leaders had immediately bothered to visit the Federcalcio, the Italian coach Roberto Mancini and his fresh European champions. A choice certainly not casual, therefore, of which it is necessary to try at least to understand reasons and perspectives.
Popular sport
“In Afghanistan, cricket is like football in Italy: a clearing or a square is enough, in any city or village, and kids take to the streets with more or less improvised bats and balls to play”, tells us Barbara Schiavulli, freelance correspondent for war that knows the Afghan scene, culture and society well. Paradoxically – “because they are opposed to any exaltation of the body, of individuality, of creativity”, explains Schiavulli – a first rise in discipline in the country coincided with the power of the Taliban between 1996 and 2001, with many refugees Afghans in neighboring Pakistan who have started practicing it. Cricket thus began to make its way among other widely diffused sports. For instance? Competitions with kites, dog fighting and buzkashi, literally translated into “catch the sheep”, the national sport of Afghanistan and also very popular in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan (in fact it is an equestrian discipline that consists precisely in grabbing while riding a sheep carcass, then dragging or throwing it into an in-goal area).