The scenes at Brisbane airport that summer a few years ago did not feel real. The terminal was almost empty, but security was intense. Medics in face shields stood alongside masked officials, making the place feel less like an arrival hall and more like a containment zone.
Our bus – carrying newly arrived Afghans evacuated after the fall of Kabul – was escorted by police to a tall, expensive-looking hotel. One by one, we were funnelled into separate rooms, processed with clinical efficiency. We were told little, except that we would not leave for two weeks.
Kabul had fallen only days earlier. In the space of weeks, a 20-year experiment in rebuilding a country collapsed. An entire generation – my generation – who had grown up believing in elections, education and the possibility of peace, watched their future disappear almost overnight.
Behind locked doors, with heavy hearts and very little certainty, we began the wait to start a new life in a new country, Australia.
Within minutes of checking in, my phone rang. It was Sardar, another newly arrived Afghan. His voice sounded different – lighter, almost joyful.
“Turn on the TV,” he said. “Cricket is on. Rashid is playing. Here. In Australia.”
That moment mattered more than most Australians will ever know.
Locked inside quarantine rooms in Brisbane, Afghan refugees glued themselves to television screens as Rashid Khan took the field for the Adelaide Strikers. By then, Rashid was already one of the Big Bash League’s most successful overseas players: 98 wickets in 69 matches, an economy rate of 6.44, and a bowling average hovering around 17 – elite numbers in any T20 competition. He had also become a crowd favourite, not just for his skill but for the joy and energy he brought to the game.
He bowled with his usual menace. He hit late-order sixes at a strike rate well over 150. And on his hands were gloves stitched in the three colours of the Afghan flag: black, red and green.
At a time when the Taliban had seized every government building, every embassy and every official symbol of Afghanistan, Rashid and his teammates were among the very few Afghans still carrying the tricolour on a global stage.
Soon, we saw others too: Mohammad Nabi and Zahir Khan in Melbourne Renegades colours; Mujeeb Ur Rahman turning out for the Brisbane Heat. For Afghan refugees in quarantine, cricket was not escapism – it was continuity. Proof that Afghanistan had not vanished from the world.
That is why the silence around Afghan cricket now feels so heavy.
Australia has repeatedly cancelled or declined to schedule bilateral series against Afghanistan’s men’s team, citing the Taliban’s ban on women and girls from sport. This stance has been consistent, quiet and firm. The intention is understandable. But the impact it has shows it is deeply flawed.
Afghan male cricketers are being penalised for decisions made by a regime they do not represent, do not control and often cannot safely criticise. Many have family still inside Afghanistan. Some are themselves refugees. Yet they are pretty much the only visible Afghans the world still engages with – and so they alone absorb the consequences of international outrage.
Meanwhile, Afghan cricket as a sporting story has continued to defy expectations. Since gaining full ICC membership in 2017, Afghanistan’s men’s team has steadily risen. In 2024, they reached the semi-finals of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, defeating established teams along the way and cementing their reputation as one of the game’s most remarkable success stories.
Their fanbase is vast and deeply emotional – not just inside Afghanistan, but across the diaspora in Australia, Europe and the Middle East. Matches featuring Afghanistan routinely draw huge online engagement, with millions following players like Rashid across leagues from the IPL to the BBL.
And yet, this summer, the Afghan presence that once felt so visible in Australia has faded. Rashid’s recent absence from the Big Bash League has been due largely to injury and scheduling, not selection – but symbolically, the effect is the same. A generation of Afghan Australians no longer see themselves reflected on Australia’s biggest cricket stage.
This is not an argument to simply “play them” and move on.
Cricket Australia has leverage – moral, financial and symbolic – and it can use it far more effectively than quiet disengagement.
There is another path.
Australia could pursue conditional engagement, explicitly tied to visible and material support for Afghan women cricketers now living in exile – many of them in Australia. BBL contracts for Afghan male players could be paired with funding, facilities, visas, coaching roles or broadcast platforms for displaced Afghan female athletes.
Rather than isolation, Australia could lead.
Cricket Australia could also use its influence within the ICC – where Afghanistan remains a full member – to push for structural reforms that allow exiled women’s teams to gain recognition and pathways to competition, instead of relying on symbolic withdrawal that leaves everyone worse off.
None of this legitimises the Taliban. It bypasses them entirely.
When I first arrived in Australia, watching Rashid Khan under those lights did something politics could not. It cut through fear and grief and reminded us that dignity, pride and belonging were still possible.
Cricket has always claimed to be more than a game. For Afghans in quarantine, it truly was. Australia can still honour that power – not by erasing Afghan cricketers from view, but by using the game to stand with all of them.
