When cricket became louder than guns for Afghanistan

There comes a game in every cricketing nation’s history that turns into a schism between the past and the future. It becomes so big in magnitude and emotion that it ruptures the flowing narrative of history, bifurcating events into before it and after it. 

The 1983 World Cup final for India, Bangladesh's game against India in the 2007 World Cup, that era-defining Harmanpreet Kaur innings in the 2017 World Cup - there has been one such match for every cricket team, and unsurprisingly, they have mostly come in a World Cup. In cricket, there is no occasion bigger, no challenge greater. 

Afghanistan have been playing ODI internationals since 2009 and World Cups since 2015. In the latter, until this game against England, the South Asian nation had won just 1 in 17 games (against Scotland). They went through the entire 2019 World Cup without winning a single game. 

To say that a win in a World Cup was a long time coming for Afghanistan would be a big understatement. 

Ever since cricket started for the Afghans in the refugee camps of Peshawar, Pakistan, they had dreamed of listening to their national anthem being played on the World stage. The Nawroz Mangals and the Hamid Hassans achieved that for the team. But the Rashid Khans, the Mujeeb Ur Rahmans, and the Rahmanullah Gurbazs hadn’t had their glory moment on the international stage yet. 

It all changed today when Afghanistan not only won but thrashed England by 69 runs in a game where the young and old of this team came together to give their nation a chance to escape from the shadows of war.

It was no fluke. No lucky victory. It was a clinical takedown of the defending champions by a side with an enviable spin attack and a solid batting core, threatening to do something like this for years. 

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Gurbaz and Ibrahim Zadran, easily the two best Afghan batters, started off majestically against the England new ball bowling attack, putting up a partnership of 114 in just 16.4 overs!! Afghanistan aren’t known for their quick starts, but Gurbaz’s effervescent batting talent was just too hot for a cold start. 

He played through the off side with such panache that you’d want to drop all inhibitions and christen him as the best batter the Afghans have ever produced. How he created width against Reece Topley, Chris Woakes, and Sam Curran reflected elite intent. He hit eight boundaries and four sixes, scoring 80 off just 57 balls before a self-destructing runout ended his blistering knock. 

Gurbaz’s innings was the initial injection of speed that Afghanistan needed to pull off a big total. He had done it in franchise cricket throughout the globe, now he was doing it for his nation. 

Sadly, it was a disappointing display by the middle-order, but Ikram Alikhil, playing just his sixth game for Afghanistan since the 2019 World Cup, scored a 58 and combined with Rashid (23 off 22) and Mujeeb (28 off 16) to take Afghanistan to 284. 

It felt like an under-par total, given that Adil Rashid and Liam Livingstone had turned the ball. Kotla wasn’t as flat as the South Africa game. However, it was still good enough to bat on. The boundaries were still small. And to add to it all, there was another kind of pressure that Afghanistan doesn’t have to deal with enough at the international level - a big Afghan crowd was there in the stands, and their eyes were shining with the hope of victory. 

Delhi’s Jangpura and Lajpat Nagar areas have a sizeable Afghan population living there. Most of them are either students or working people, trying to find some happiness through cricket amidst the din of war and calamities that continue to affect their home nation - a place where they can’t even go now. 

They all chanted Rashid, Rashid, whenever the Afghan superstar circled the boundary - reminding him that he might be their hero, but he also had a job at hand. 

In the 2019 World Cup, England had scored 397 against Afghanistan. Rashid had given 110 runs in just nine overs - a figure you would never associate with the globetrotting leg-spinning legend. 

England were rocked early in their chase when Afghanistan’s best pacer with the new ball (a symbol of their improving pace reserves) - Fazalhaq Farooqi, pinned Jonny Bairstow leg before. After that, it was the spin show for Afghanistan - exactly how this contest was built up. 

Mujeeb bowled a classic googly to get Joe Root, beating him not only by height, as said on commentary, but also by length in a Test match style dismissal. The ball drifted and turned in, shattering his stumps. It was an omen about what would come as the Afghanistan spinners pulverised the English batting. 

Mohammad Nabi, the veteran who has been playing for Afghanistan since 2009, bowled a classic off break that drifted in, gripped in the pitch, and just turned slightly away - enough to dismiss England’s best batter of spin, Dawid Malan. Five overs later, Jos Buttler was clean bowled by the pacer Naveen-ul-Haq on a delivery that swung in prodigiously, not very different from Jasprit Bumrah’s ball to Mohammad Rizwan a day ago.

Harry Brook was the only batter to offer some resistance with a 66 in a meek batting display. After that, it was a Rashid redemption show. He combined with Nabi and Mujeeb to clean up the lower-order batters, getting himself 3 for 37 in the process. Mujeeb finished with three poles himself, and Nabi got 2. 

The defending champions were done, dusted and swept away. The Rashid redemption show was a success, and so was Kotla’s redemption arc - transforming from the ugly stadium full of red tobacco hoardings to a swanky-looking establishment with all the World Cup branding. 

26,440 people witnessed not only a team coming out from the fog of war to bask in victorious glory but also a stadium finding some hope for itself. 

That was, after all, the theme of the night - HOPE. 

For the Afghans who live in Delhi, they could forget their troubles back home as Rashid hugged Mujeeb with a smile that stretched from Kabul to Kandahar. Mujeeb even dedicated his Player of the Match award to the earthquake victims in Herat province. 

For people like me, the non-Afghans, the victory was an opportunity to remember Asghar Afghan, Hamid Hassan, Nawroz Mangal, Samiullah Shenwari, Mohammad Shahzad etc, along with coaches like Raees Ahmadzai, Iqbal Sikander and Kabir Khan - the initial mavericks of Afghan cricket, who lifted a refugee population through a sport to help them realize their nationhood and be proud of it. 

As Afghans in the stands embraced each other with emotions, you could feel that this wasn’t just a victory for Afghanistan’s most popular sports team but a moment for all Afghans around the World to be much more than just their conflict-ridden history. 

The sound of cricket overpowered the sound from the guns yesterday, at least in their minds, if not in reality.