International cricketers should support Afghanistan’s men’s team, not punish them by boycotting matches, if the Taliban bar women from playing, the former director of the women’s team said.
Tuba Sangar, who fled Afghanistan for Canada shortly after the fall of the country to the Taliban, said that sports sanctions would damage the game at the grassroots — including for women and girls.
“It’s not a good idea to boycott the male team. They did a lot for Afghanistan — they introduced Afghanistan to the world in a positive way,” Sangar said on Tuesday.
Photo: AP
“If we don’t have a male team, there would be no hope for cricket overall,” said the 28-year-old, who was director of women’s cricket for the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) from 2014 to last year.
Australia’s cricket officials have threatened to cancel a historic maiden Test between the two countries — set to take place in November — after a senior Taliban official went on television to say that it was “not necessary” for women to play.
During their first stint in power, before being ousted in 2001, the Taliban banned most forms of entertainment — including many sports — and stadiums were used as public execution venues. Women were completely banned from playing sports.
However, the sport has become immensely popular over the past few decades, largely as a result of cricket-mad Pakistan across the border. This time around, the Taliban have shown that they do not mind men playing cricket, pulling together a match in the capital, Kabul, shortly after foreign forces withdrew.
However, on Tuesday, Bashir Ahmad Rustamzai, Afghanistan’s new director-general for sports, declined to answer as to whether women would be allowed to play sports — deferring it for top-level Taliban leaders to decide.
The takeover has called into question the future of Afghanistan’s participation in Test matches, as under International Cricket Council regulations, nations must also have a women’s team.
The Afghan men’s team is also scheduled to play the T20 World Cup from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14 in the United Arab Emirates and Oman.
The ACB last week urged Australia not to punish its men’s team, saying that it was “powerless to change the culture and religious environment of Afghanistan.”
ACB chairman Azizullah Fazli later told SBS Radio Pashto that he is still hopeful that women would be allowed to play.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier