Cricket Australia has announced the Australian men’s cricket team will not play in a T20 series against Afghanistan in August, citing human rights concerns for women and girls in the country.
In a statement announcing the postponement, Cricket Australia said it had consulted with the Australian government on the situation with Afghanistan over the past 12 months and “the government’s advice is that conditions for women and girls in Afghanistan are getting worse”.
“For this reason, we have maintained our previous position and will postpone the bilateral series against Afghanistan.”
Cricket Australia also said it would keep working with the International Cricket Council and Afghanistan Cricket Board to try to figure out how to play bilateral matches in the future.
This is the third time that Cricket Australia has made the decision to postpone matches against Afghanistan in an ODI series.
Last year, Australia’s men’s team withdrew from an ODI series against Afghanistan that was scheduled to be played in the United Arab Emirates in March 2023. It said the decision was due to the Taliban’s “further restrictions on women’s and girls’ education and employment opportunities and their ability to access parks and gyms”.
At the time, Cricket Australia said they would “continue to engage with the Afghanistan Cricket Board in anticipation of improved conditions for women and girls in the country”.
Australia and Afghanistan were also scheduled to face off in Perth in November 2020, but the game was postponed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
In August the following year, the Taliban took control of Afghanistan, which made a number of countries concerned about playing Afghanistan on a global stage. The Afghan women’s cricket team hasn’t participated in international tournaments since this time.
Currently, Afghanistan is the only full-member nation of the International Cricket Council (ICC0 without a women’s team.
The Australian men’s team’s most recent match against Afghanistan was at the ODI World Cup in November 2023.
Responding to Australia’s decision to withdraw from this year’s Twenty20 series, the Taliban have made a statement calling Cricket Australia hypocritical for its decision.
“They [Australia] don’t mind playing [against] us when it’s in their favour, when they don’t have a choice or when it works for them and it shows their hypocrisy,” Suhail Shaheen, the Taliban’s spokesman in Doha, told Al Jazeera.
“When they ask our [Afghan] players to be part of their league, they suddenly forget about women’s rights but when it’s in their interest to ignore us they talk about women.”
Shaheen said that Australia and Cricket Australia were “trying to impose their own culture and values through sport”.
However, Australia has never played against Afghanistan outside of an ICC event, previously stating “there is a distinction between playing bilateral series against Afghanistan which falls under CA control as compared to playing in a World Cup tournament which is an ICC even and subject to their regulations”.