International Cricket Council (ICC) recently established a specific taskforce. It’s an important role this team will play to support displaced female cricketers from Afghanistan. This new program directly addresses the immediate needs of some of the greatest professional female players. After the Taliban regained power in 2021, these athletes evacuated from the country as their right to participate in sports was essentially criminalized.
Big cricketing establishments will support the strengthen of the taskforce. This assistance has featured aid from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), Cricket Australia and the Board of Control for Cricket in India – The BCCI. Now, these NGOs are hell bent on saving the Afghanistan women’s cricket team. They hope for it to serve as a bastion of freedom for women and girls in Afghanistan, and around the world.
It would require generous funding to stay true to the ICC’s fiery demands to keep female players from Afghanistan well shod. Most importantly, they highlight the invaluable impact these athletes make on our game. The ICC is kicking off a new, robust high-performance program. This new program will provide top-level coaching, state-of-the-art facilities and individualized mentoring as athletes develop the skills needed to perform at their best.
The high-performance programme will serve as the model for the taskforce. To continue helping these women cricketers displaced from the Taliban on their new journeys, we are launching a specific support fund. ICC Chairman Jay Shah has previously stated his commitment to addressing everyone and promoting inclusivity, saying
“We are deeply committed to fostering inclusivity and ensuring every cricketer has the opportunity to shine, regardless of their circumstances.”
The ECB’s Richard Gould echoed this sentiment, highlighting the organization’s pride in supporting this new initiative. He noted,
“We have been vocal in recent times around the need for meaningful funding to support female players from Afghanistan so that they can thrive despite not being able to play at home.”
This monumental joint endeavor marks an essential step towards a shared vision of global cricket’s expansion, showcasing the game’s power to foster unity and resilience. Shah further remarked on this initiative, stating,
“This initiative reflects our steadfast dedication to cricket’s global growth and its power to inspire unity, resilience and hope.”
The ICC’s pledge goes much deeper than just forming a taskforce. It requires that all of its 211 full members, including Afghanistan, develop a national women’s team. Threats to female athletes in Afghanistan remain dire. For comparison, the men’s national team at least stringently defended its Test status while making it to the Champions Trophy this year and the semi-finals of last year’s T20 World Cup.
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