Second XI

by Tim Wigmore

  Afghanistan’s captain is one example. Nabi was born on New Year’s Day 1985 in a refugee camp in Pakistan. The Nabis had fled Afghanistan as the war between the Soviet Union and the Mujahideen became ever more devastating. It was here that they came into contact with cricket for the first time. When the family returned to Afghanistan at the start of the next century, they took their enthusiasm for the sport with them. Although ‘there were no grounds, nothing in Afghanistan at that time’, Nabi was not to be deterred by the lack of cricketing infrastructure in his new home of Kabul, or the rest of the country.

  As the Taliban extended their grip over Afghanistan in the 1990s, sport was not immune from the consequences. The Taliban took a markedly more draconian line than other Islamic regimes; while football thrived in Wahabi-dominated Saudi Arabia, it was anathema in Afghanistan.

  Yet the Taliban’s al-Qaeda-funded regime made an exception for one sport: cricket. The elder brother of the first head of the Afghanistan Cricket Federation, founded in 1995, was a member of the Taliban. The Afghanistan Cricket Federation registered with the Afghan Olympic Committee as a national sport.

  In January 2000 the Taliban urged the Afghanistan Cricket Federation to write to the Pakistan Cricket Board requesting support to join the International Cricket Council as an affiliate member. In cricket, the Taliban saw a sport that could both promote the regime at home and gain some acceptance abroad. The Taliban recognised cricket as a sport that could fit easily with a hardline Islamic state. After all, cricket was Pakistan’s national sport, and Pakistan was one of only three states to recognise the Taliban as Afghanistan’s official government. Taliban teams had even been known to play in Pakistan, as recounted in Wounded Tiger.

  Cricket sat easily with Afghanistan’s cultural heritage. The sport bears significant resemblances to the old Afghan game of top danda. Both games involve a wooden bat hitting a spherical object. Cricket’s dress code also proved amenable to the Taliban. Unlike football, where the kit marked out those who wore it out as heathens in the Taliban’s eyes, cricket kits accommodated religious and cultural requirements.

  ‘Cricket became one of the favourite games of the Taliban because of the clothing,’ Dr Muhammad reflected. ‘They were not allowing sports with half trousers (shorts). In Islam, your knees should be hidden in your trousers and that’s it. Your knees should be hidden because that will allow you to offer prayers.’ In contrast to other sports, there is no direct physical contact between players in cricket.

  After the 9/11 attacks on the United States, Afghanistan became the focus of President George W. Bush’s ‘War on Terror’. As provinces have been fought over since, cricket has offered a rare source of stability. It is played and watched in all parts of Afghanistan.

  Taliban insurgents from Pakistan often inhabit the areas where cricket is most popular. ‘Cricket is stronger in areas where the Taliban are stronger,’ Dr Muhammad noted.

  The Taliban have latched on to the sport. It is a shrewd move and means that the success of the Afghan cricketing side cannot be used as proof of the virtues of a more Westernised life. The Taliban have instead tried to claim the success of the cricket side as their own: leading players are reputed to have received gifts from people associated with the Taliban.

  ‘The Taliban don’t have any problem with cricket,’ Afghanistan’s former coach Taj Malik told me. ‘In areas that are ruled by Taliban there are a lot of boys playing cricket.’

  Jalalabad, a Taliban stronghold 80km from the Pakistan border, is regarded as the home of Afghan cricket, and is the home of Taj, the man regarded as the sport’s father in Afghanistan.

  After spending 16 years as a refugee, Taj had no time for those who thought that his dreams of Afghanistan reaching the World Cup were incredible. Temperamental and bombastic, Taj lifted Afghan cricket up through his insatiable enthusiasm and self-belief.

  No one would have wanted to call the Kacha Gari refugee camp on the edge of Peshawar home. For tens of thousands of Afghans, including Taj and his ten siblings, it was allowing a sort of normalcy to develop. For Taj and many others, cricket was the centrepiece of their lives as refugees. ‘When we were refugees in Pakistan, we got interested watching international matches. I started playing cricket in 1987 when England was touring Pakistan during Mike Gatting’s captaincy.’

  This was not the sport as Gatting’s team knew it. It was played with a stick and plastic bags wrapped up to make a ball or, if the players were more fortunate, a tennis ball. The Kacha Gari refugee camp contained little flat land so most games were played on a gradient. No one who played here would ever moan about the Lord’s slope.

  It was still cricket. Taj set up a team in the camp: Afghan Cricket Club. Ramshackle as it was, for many Afghans the refugee camps provided their first exposure to cricket. It did more than just imbue Afghans with a love of the game.

  The bonds forged in Pakistani refugee camps remain. Nabi played with Asghar Stanikzai, Dawlat Zadran and Shapoor Zadran, key figures in the national side today, in Peshawar. The players broke into the local club scene, where they played alongside leading Pakistan players including Umar Gul and Arshad Khan, both of whom would play Test cricket. Afghanistan’s cricketers can hardly claim to have been lucky, but it was fortunate that their years in Peshawar coincided with the flourishing of the game in that part of Pakistan.

  As the refugees returned to Afghanistan, they found a country that had no time for cricket. ‘Even in 1995 there were not more than 20 or 30 people who were playing cricket in the country because it was a very new game,’ Dr Muhammad said. The refugees took their new sport with them. ‘They started street cricket. They were playing in very rough areas in football grounds.’

  One refugee returning from Pakistan was Allah Dad Noori. In 1995 he set up the Afghan Cricket Federation in Kabul. It was the first organised cricket body in Afghanistan’s history. Taj Malik and Allah Dad fought for control of the nascent Afghan cricket team. Eventually they hit upon a compromise: Taj would become coach, while Allah Dad assumed the presidency of the Afghan Cricket Federation (which later became the Afghan Cricket Board).

  In June 2001 the ACF was registered with the ICC, who awarded Afghanistan affiliate membership. Their first official tour was to Pakistan later that year, where they played against club sides.

  Afghanistan’s first official fixtures came when they were invited to the Asian Cricket Council Trophy in 2004, a tournament featuring 15 teams (though none of the four Asian full members). The competition was held in Malaysia: this was the first time that any of the players had flown on an aeroplane.

  Before they did that, there was the small obstacle of obtaining passports. This was more onerous that it sounds: many players had only a vague idea of when they were born. ‘Talking to my mother, she works out my age by seeing who the president was,’ the Afghan player Raees Ahmadzai told ESPNCricinfo in 2009. ‘Unofficially I’m nearly 25, give or take three years. Or four. I could be 21 or 28.’

  The cricket was a modest success. Afghanistan lost their first official game – to Oman – by four wickets, but then defeated Bahrain and Malaysia to finish sixth in the tournament. The game was also beginning to show the positive effects it could have in Afghanistan. Wisden in 2004 highlights one example. ‘Allah Dad Noori was playing one day in Kabul when a young man walked by carrying an AK47, watched for a while before being invited to join in. Afterwards, he asked if he could play next time. When he returned he was without the rifle. “Where’s your AK47?” asked Noori. “Oh, I don’t need that,” the youth replied. “I’m playing cricket!”’

  Factionalism was never far away in Afghan cricket. Allah Dad, by now the vice-president of the Afghan Cricket Federation, had appointed himself as captain of the side for the ACC Trophy in 2004. It was not a decision that owed much to his playing ability. His top score in the tournament was three; he bowled a total of ten overs, which went for 85 runs while claiming only one wicket. He dropped himself from the team for the final two games.


  When he returned home, Allah Dad found out that not only had he lost his job as captain and been dropped from the squad, he had also been sacked from the Afghan Cricket Federation.

  The outside world was beginning to take notice of Afghan cricket. An MCC team toured India in March 2006 and invited Afghanistan over for a game, splitting the cost of Afghanistan’s trip to Mumbai with the British Embassy, who were one of the early financial supporters of the game in Afghanistan. MCC were captained by a 48-year-old Mike Gatting, and the blithe assumption was that they would give Afghanistan a lesson in playing the game.

  Gatting, whose England tour to Pakistan in 1987 had inspired Taj’s love for the game, edged behind for a duck. His side fared little better: Afghanistan won the 40-over game by 171 runs. A cricket promoter observing their success then organised a tour to England in 2006. ‘When we go there, the English counties and other cricket journalists they don’t know anything about Afghan cricket,’ Taj recalled. By the end of the tour their opponents had a sense of Afghanistan’s talent: playing mainly against county second teams, they won six of their seven games.

  Afghanistan’s victory over MCC had special significance for two Afghan cricketers, Hameed Hassan and Mohammad Nabi. The bandana-wearing Hassan impressed with his pace and swing; Nabi bludgeoned 116.

  While they had both lived on refugee camps, in other ways their life experiences were hugely different, and emblematic of the diversity in the Afghan side. Nabi’s family is among the wealthiest in Afghanistan, and has always keenly supported cricket. Like Nabi, Hassan learned the game in Peshawar, but his family loathed the game and attempted to stop him playing. The Hassans only embraced cricket when Hameed was becoming successful.

  Both earned contracts to play for MCC Young Cricketers in 2006. John Stephenson, head of cricket at MCC, said that they brought a ‘pure and joyful’ approach to training sessions at Lord’s. ‘Incredibly dedicated and strong’, Hassan has the build of an ox but has ‘no sense of when to stop’, perhaps explaining why he has been injured so often. Rapid and with a devilish yorker, Hassan smashed Monty Panesar’s helmet with a bouncer in the nets. Nabi also made an impact – in fact, he made cricketing history. Playing for MCC against Sri Lanka A, he became the first player in the history of first-class cricket to hit the first ball in both innings of his debut for six.

  Helped by their experience in England, Afghanistan had made solid progress since their first international in 2004. They came third in the Asian Cricket Council Trophy in 2006, an improvement of two positions on their previous performance. But Taj Malik and his team always had greater dreams. They wanted to play in the World Cup. Thanks to their performances in the ACC Trophy, they had a chance.

  Still, it was a remote one. Afghanistan had to win three consecutive promotions – from World Cricket League Division Five, Four and then Three – just to get to the final World Cup qualifiers, where 12 teams would compete for the four places in the 2011 World Cup. However fanciful, the dream instilled Afghanistan’s players with a palpable sense of purpose.

  In May 2008 a squad made up entirely of former refugees in Pakistan headed to Jersey for the World Cricket League Division Five. Vanuatu, Norway, Japan and the Bahamas were among those competing alongside Afghanistan. By now the Afghan side had the company of a group of film-makers who, sensing what an incredible story they had stumbled upon, followed the side around for two years in making the superb film Out of the Ashes. The director Tim Albone first encountered the side in 2005. ‘They had such enthusiasm for the game and such self-belief. It really stayed with me’ – so much so that he decided to make a film about their attempts to qualify for the 2011 World Cup.

  Before the squad left for Jersey, the film-makers spoke to the British ambassador to Afghanistan about the side’s prospects. ‘They play cricket like war,’ he said before predicting, ‘They’re going to be stuffed!’ against international sides.

  He was emphatically wrong on the second point, but it was hard to disagree with him on the first. For most sides in the competition, international sport was an enjoyable divergence from their mundane existences; Jersey’s side included financiers and hedge fund workers. Afghanistan’s desperation for success boiled over into ugly histrionics when decisions did not go their way. ‘You could see how much they wanted to win,’ Matt Hague, who captained Jersey in the tournament, recalled. ‘We thought they were a little bit arrogant.’

  Jersey contained copious surprises for the players. For most, it was the first time they had gone beyond Afghanistan, Pakistan or Malaysia. In their hotel, the squad looked incredulous at the sight of female pensioners line-dancing. So distrusting were the squad of the local cuisine that they regularly ate at McDonald’s.

  Without rain, Afghanistan might well not have qualified from their group. Their game against Jersey, who won their four group matches, was abandoned; had it gone ahead, Afghanistan would have needed to win. They then had to beat Nepal in the semi-final to advance to World Cricket League Division Four. Thanks to Nabi, who scored 48 and took two wickets, they did.

  Before planning for their trip to Tanzania for World Cricket League Division Four, Afghanistan played in the Division Five final against Jersey. After collapsing to 42/7 in pursuit of 81 to defeat the hosts in the final, they scrambled to a two-wicket victory.

  ‘Once we won the final I couldn’t control myself from crying,’ the batsman Raees Ahmadzai told me. In Jersey he ‘saw peace and I saw birds and animals flying around and walking around in the middle of people. I was sad that our birds and animals are not feeling safe in our country.’ As the crowd applauded austerely, Taj fell to his knees, sobbing in celebration.

  After all he had done for Afghan cricket, Taj might have felt entitled to some loyalty in return. But players turned on him after defeat in the semi-finals of the ACC Trophy in 2008 (a completely separate competition to the World Cricket League). No one doubted Taj’s commitment but his bluster and ludicrous predictions were deeply unhelpful. In Jersey alone, he boasted that Afghanistan would score 400 runs against Japan and that they could beat England. He threatened to throw himself into the Atlantic if Afghanistan failed to win the tournament.

  Afghanistan now needed more than a brimful of passion. They needed a coach who could develop their cricketing skills, someone who would not resort to chain-smoking at the sight of a batting collapse.

  Taj remains rankled by his departure. ‘Up to Jersey there was no government involvement in cricket, and there was no support from any department,’ he said. ‘When cricket became more popular all people got interested, all the nation got interested and the government removed me from my post. They told me, “Now we are going to the big stage and you are a low level coach.” But I’d done the most difficult job to help the team to play with a hard ball and I gathered the team and motivated them.’

  England had just ditched Peter Moores – largely because he lacked Test experience – in favour of someone who had played at the highest level. Afghanistan did the same: for all Taj’s achievements, cricket in Afghanistan has never been about sentiment.

  Kabir Khan was appointed as his successor. As a former Test cricketer for Pakistan (albeit only for four Tests) he was assured of respect. And though he could be considered a foreign coach, Kabir could not be called a carpetbagger. Like many of the Afghan side, he was born in Peshawar. His late father was Afghan.

  ‘It was a tribute to him,’ he said. ‘I thought if I could do something for that country, then my father might be happy.’ Kabir spoke Pashto, the most popular language in Peshawar and Pakistan-bordering parts of Afghanistan, as well as some Dari, Afghanistan’s other official language, so communicating with the players was not a problem.

  ‘I could speak to them in their mother tongue. They needed someone who could translate cricket language into their own language.’

  Kabir described his role as more akin to a ‘headmaster keeping an eye on everything’ than a cricket coach. He had to teach the players everything from how to behave
at functions to how to speak to the media and how to eat like athletes. On one occasion, on the night before an ODI in the Netherlands in 2009, some players became embroiled in an uber-competitive dance contest with locals until the early hours. ‘I shouted “it’s not going to be a dance match tomorrow”,’ Kabir remembered.

  Paradoxically, developing a professional mentality – even though the players were only paid expenses until 2010 – was easier because of the turbulence in Afghanistan. ‘I was lucky, in that when I joined them, they were training full-time because there was nothing else to do. They were free anytime for practice,’ Kabir reflected. ‘And the respect of all the team for me, I could see it was like for another brother or a fatherly figure. All of them respected me a lot. Each thing in training I said, they never questioned it, they just did it. I think that was the main reason for their success.’

  Kabir had a subtler and less demonstrative coaching style than Taj. Afghanistan became calmer and more disciplined in their shot selection and running between the wickets. They no longer collapsed like a tribute act to the 1990s England cricket team. Along with Afghanistan, Jersey qualified from Division Five to Division Four, which was held in October 2008 in Tanzania. Even during the three months between Division Five and Four, Afghanistan improved significantly. ‘They were at a different level,’ said the Jersey captain Hague. ‘They were always very strong in bowling but they became much better at building an innings. It wasn’t so wham-bam.’

  In Tanzania, Jersey shared a hotel with Afghanistan and unlikely friendships developed between the two qualifiers from Division Five. ‘When you got to know them they were great people,’ Hague said. ‘They said to us we should come and play cricket in Afghanistan.’ That invitation was not taken up, but Hague heeded advice from Hameed Hassan during Afghanistan’s game against Jersey. Hague was padded up to bat at number three but, because of the heat, was waiting to bat without his helmet on. ‘Hameed said to me, “Skip, are you not wearing a helmet?” He was a bit worried for me – he knew he was going to bowl some short stuff.’