From refugee camps to the Lord’s pitch
Zimbabwe. On Wednesday, they will replace Australia in a tri-Test series in South Africa, who are first in the ODI rankings.
It is perhaps apt that growth of the world’s most polite sport in the harshest of conditions can be attributed, in some part, to British intervention. Fane’s mission has always been to spread grass roots access through training camps, equipment and running tournaments.
“Playing team sports, and against each other, brings different ethnic groups together,” she explains. “It is the one thing that really unifies the country. It also teaches kids they can’t just storm off the pitch – they have to learn the rules of cricket.”
She first visited the country while working as a war zone doctor in stints between 1987 and 2001, and was struck by the population’s “resilience and determination”. Staying with mujahideen to organise clinics for refugee women and children, she eventually returned to the Berkshire Downs to have four children.
Now her charity’s tag-line is “Getting kids to pick up bats instead of guns”, and the message is ringing through.
“There are a lot of problems in Afghanistan,” affirms Jamal, “but a lot of children are now joining games and spend their days playing cricket.” Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) has partnered with Afghan Connection, and Matthew Fleming, its president, visited Kabul and Jalalabad to explain the game and help build pitches.
On dusty patches of ground crowds of up to 12,000 have been known to gather at the cricket camps intended for 50 boys, and local governors have diverted funds to cricket development. In many places, girls are being taught, foregoing burkas to better wield a bat. “The impact has been beyond our wildest dreams,” says Fleming.
“When I travelled in Afghanistan in 2001, there was very little cricket,” says Fane. “There was no hope. All many children had known was conflict and damage. The rise of cricket has brought so much joy. It has given kids their childhood back. It has given them heroes to cheer, happy news and a game they can all go and play.”
It’s true the Afghan national team’s fans are euphoric; dancing on pitches and turning up with flowers and music. At Lord’s last week, they arrived more than two hours before the start of play with an ebullience that flummoxed the stewards.
The idea for cricket as a path to peace came from Fane’s son, Alex, then 14, who had read about the struggling national team in 2007.
He wrote to Fleming, the former England cricketer and Kent captain, who brought the MCC on board. In 2008, Fane delivered donated kit to the National Academy in Kabul. “That was just a dust field at the time,” she recalls. “I somehow took out three great big bags stuffed full of shirts, wickets, balls and bats. They were absolutely thrilled. They were in the World Cricket League Division 5 and generally hadn’t had much support.”
In the years since, players coached through the camps have gone on to play U16 and U19 for national sides.
At one camp Raees Ahmadzai, the former Afghan captain, who was coaching, couldn’t hit any balls bowled by one particular boy. “He said: ‘You’ve got to come to the National Academy tomorrow – your life is changed,” says Fane.
Fane’s initial vision for Afghan Connection was to work with schools to provide villages with equipment, school buildings and teacher training for boys and girls. Her resolve, through this and the cricket, has always been to lift out a forgotten, backward nation from the slump it has grown accustomed to. But why the compulsion to stay behind to help when everyone else – British military included – has left?
“It’s the people,” she says. “They are extraordinary in that they have had so much thrown at them. This cricket team has come from the refugee camps to the world stage.
It is so symbolic of Afghanistan and that’s why I love it.”
Words: India Sturgis