Unchained Melody

In a conversation with Gomesh S, Firooza Amiri, one of the many Afghan cricketers who left the country and lives in Australia, talks about their journey in the past three and a half years, fight to play cricket & the way forward...

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S Azmatullah Omarzai produced late fireworks to help Afghanistan men post 273 runs against Australia in the ICC Champions Trophy match on Friday afternoon in Lahore, among the thousands of fans in the stands cheering for them was an Afghan girl.

Holding a placard above her head, the young girl was sending a message to not just her country, but the cricketing world. The English translation of the Pashto message read along the lines of: "I'm an Afghan girl, I want to become a doctor. Please don't oppress us and take away my dreams."

That young girl in the stands of the Gaddafi Stadium, Lahore on Saturday is not alone. About 10,500 kilometers away, in Melbourne and Canberra, Australia, several women cricketers from Afghanistan were staying up in the night to watch the men's team do what they have been stripped of and fighting for—play cricket for their country—since the Taliban took over in 2021.

Growing up in the oasis city of Herat in the western part of Afghanistan, Firooza Amiri did not like cricket. Football was the popular sport in her city. It was Amiri's sister who liked cricket and made sure it was on the television all the time. At some point, Amiri gave in, wanting to know what the fuss was all about. The moment she picked up the bat in hand, she was in love. It did not take long for her to go from there to a national selection camp in Kabul which led to the then Afghanistan Cricket Board handing her a contract among other 23 cricketers in 2020. However, in August 2021, it all came down crashing. Sitting with her family in her grandmother's home, having tea, when her older aunt came and announced the Taliban takeover, Amiri's heart sank. "I went into shock," Amiri recalls. "Taliban, they are a terrorist group. I was worried so much about how am I going to still survive here? Am I going to go somewhere?," her thoughts lingered.