Afghanistan’s exiled women cricketers urge ICC to recognise their national team

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Afghanistan's exiled women cricketers are urging the International Cricket Council to follow FIFA’s lead in recognising them as a legitimate national team. It comes after world football's governing body changed the rules to allow exiled players from Afghanistan’s women's football team to play without the approval of the Taliban. Dr Catherine Ordway is a sport integrity expert and visiting scholar at UNSW’s School of Business Canberra. She was instrumental in helping bring some of Afghan women's cricket to Australia and is urging the ICC to act.

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00:02no absolutely no response not informally or formally none of the women's team have heard

00:09from them completely silent well it's absolutely not a good look as as you say there's a an example

00:17already out there with the international federation for football and i hope that a number of other

00:23international federations will follow suit including the cricketers the icc has put together

00:28a task force they'd put together a task force previously which didn't meet at all at least

00:34this task force has met once but they do not have a plan as far as we can see the

00:41women's team have

00:42been asking for a representative on the task force at the moment it's just made up of the bcci the

00:48the indian cricket the the english cricket and australian cricket of course cricket australia

00:54representatives but none of the women are represented and they do not have a plan going

01:00forward after the funding ends in august so that's really concerning for the women's team they want

01:06to send a strong message to the women and girls stuck inside afghanistan who are not allowed to

01:12get educated can't work can't move freely much less play cricket they want to send a strong message that

01:18women can do anything um but the um icc just hasn't stepped up to the plate yet it sounded really

01:27positive when they made the announcement last year as you said and the the women's team were ecstatic

01:31about it they've had a couple of training camps they've had the opportunity to go over and watch

01:37the t20 women's world cup opening match and have some training matches against some indian teams and i

01:43understand that there's also a planned trip to the uk coming up that coincides with the icc's meeting

01:51in edinburgh in scotland so at the moment the women's team isn't even on the agenda for the icc so

01:58the

01:58fact that they're going to be there at the same time i'm really hopeful will help to put some pressure

02:04on the icc to make some positive decisions both for this group of displaced women of course there are

02:10cricketers all around the world but for the ones inside afghanistan as well it's really important

02:15to send a strong message that the taliban's position on gender apartheid is completely unacceptable

Afghanistan’s exiled women cricketers urge ICC to recognise their national team

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