On a visit to Singapore, after I gushed to him about the beautiful, and very large, museum I had just visited, my cab driver—a man without any personal connection to cricket—said something touching and thoughtful: cricket seemed like a “pan-Indian language.” He’d watched Indian migrant workers playing the sport in parks and public spaces, and felt it was “a way for the Indian workers to keep up their connection with the homeland.”
Academic research confirms what the cab driver observed. Sport provides “diasporic communities with a powerful means for creating transnational ties” while shaping “ideas of their ethnic and racial identities.” Cricket becomes “a significant medium through which local experiences are translated, diasporic parameters reconfigured and national identity complicated.”1
In growth economics, Robert Solow’s work separates economic growth into two parts: what can be explained by adding more labour and capital, and what cannot. The unexplained part is the Solow residual – the contribution of technology, organisation and ideas once more workers and more machines have been accounted for.23
In economics:
Labour is the work people do, and
Capital means all the tools and equipment people use to do the work
Applied to cricket, the analogy is:
Labour: players, coaches, umpires, support staff, administrators.
Capital: stadiums, training facilities, broadcast infrastructure, league investments, media rights.
Cricket’s global rise can be thought of in the same language. There is a visible story of more players, more matches, more money and more stadiums. Alongside these are formats, platforms, new audiences and institutions that are helping the game grow, beyond what labour and capital alone would predict.
This is cricket’s Solow growth story.
The Solow lens: growth beyond inputs In a standard growth-accounting framework, output Y depends on capital K, labour L and a technology term A. When economists measure growth over time, they first calculate how much extra output comes from increases in K and L. The remainder of growth – the part not explained by these inputs – is attributed to changes in A, the Solow residual. It represents effects like better technology, improved organisation and more efficient processes.
Cricket’s output may be thought of in terms of:
Fans and viewership
Match attendance
Revenue and commercial value
Participation and playing nations
Once the contribution of labour and capital is recognised, there is still a large “something else” driving growth: formats, digital reach, women’s cricket, new markets, governance changes and cultural dynamics.
The visible inputs: labour and capital in cricket Over the last two decades, more players, support staff, and officials have been able to treat cricket as full-time work.45 On the capital side, investment has risen sharply.67 More labour and more capital would, on their own, be expected to expand cricket’s footprint. However, the scale and pattern of growth indicate that additional forces are at work.
Residual drivers In Solow’s terms, technology is not just gadgets; it is a better way of combining labour and capital to produce more output. In cricket, “technology” may be read broadly: formats, platforms, governance models and cultural transmission.23
Formats here function like a productivity-enhancing technology, since T20s allow the same talent pool and stadium infrastructure to generate more matches, more broadcast hours and more global attention per season than longer formats alone can do.
The second residual driver is how cricket uses digital platforms to reach and retain fans. Digital reach allows cricket to penetrate markets where linear television had limited presence, to offer short-form content to casual viewers, and to collect granular data on fan behaviour.8910
A major structural shift in cricket’s growth story is the rise of women’s cricket, which expands both the playing base and the fanbase. This is more than an incremental increase in labour. Incorporating women fully into the professional game changes the scale and diversity of talent, opens new commercial categories and attracts new audiences.11121314
Cricket’s growth is also being shaped by its spread into new geographies, particularly through structured leagues and global events.1516
Global tournaments amplify this effect:
ICC has expanded the number of teams in men’s and women’s T20 World Cups and increased the frequency of global events, providing more nations with regular exposure on major platforms.17
Cricket’s inclusion in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics was confirmed in 2023, with a six-team T20 competition for both men and women approved by the International Olympic Committee.15
Olympic participation is expected to support recognition and funding for cricket in national sports systems that previously gave it little priority, especially in the Americas, Europe and parts of Asia.18
Together, these developments act like opening new export markets in economic growth: the same product – cricket – now reaches more consumers in more countries.
A further contributor to cricket’s Solow-style residual is how the game is organised and governed. The franchise model aligns investors, broadcasters and local boards around shared incentives.1920 Long-term agreements for leagues like the IPL, WPL, PSL, BBL, SA20, ILT20 and MLC encourage sustained investment in academies, scouting and marketing.21
ICC’s governance and commercial approach has also evolved towards a portfolio of global events, with structured revenue-sharing mechanisms and clear qualification pathways, rather than relying solely on bilateral (and my much-missed trilateral) series for income and exposure.2223Separate and more tailored media-rights packages for different regions and for men’s and women’s events reflect more sophisticated commercial design, allowing cricket’s governing bodies to capture greater value from diverse markets.242526
As with economic growth, productivity gains in cricket are not evenly distributed. Franchise leagues and global events concentrate revenues and influence among a small set of boards and investors, widening the gap between cricket’s core and its periphery.27282930At the same time, calendar congestion reflects a classic growth constraint: more formats and competitions compete for the same finite player time, increasing injury risk and diluting bilateral cricket.3132 Rising output, in short, comes with coordination costs—and not all participants share equally in the gains.
No economist can measure the value of a game that allows a migrant worker to feel briefly at home. But whatever that value is, it compounds enough that the cab driver without any links to cricket was able to feel for it. In economic terms, cricket’s “A” – its equivalent of total factor productivity – is rising. The story of the sport’s future will depend not only on how many people play and how much money flows in, but on how effectively formats, institutions and cultures continue to convert those inputs into sustainable, global growth.
TL;DR, because this is not a post for cricket casuals:
Fog in North India in December, heat waves in April, election clashes, and security disruptions are predictable risks, not bad luck.
Indian cricket continues to treat these as isolated incidents rather than as interconnected system-level risks that cascade across scheduling, logistics, player welfare, and revenue.
The BCCI now runs a ₹20,000-crore ecosystem, yet lacks a transparent, enterprise-wide risk management framework appropriate to that scale.
Global sports bodies manage similar uncertainties using formal risk frameworks (e.g., ISO 31000) to decide what risks to avoid, mitigate, insure, or accept.
Applying ISO 31000 to Indian cricket shows that systematic risk management would cost far less than repeated disruptions, cancellations, and credibility damage.
At this scale, ad-hoc risk management is not neutral—it is value-destructive.
And now onto the post.
This post has been inspired by watching the BCCI schedule summer matches in tropical South India, and winter season matches in our smoggy chilled North. Watching Indian cricketers roam about in Lucknow against South Africa while wearing pollution masks while broadcasters told us match was delayed due to low visibility conditions made me wonder what other risks BCCI could just avoid, or at least manage better.
These risks are predictable. FogSmog in North India in December isn’t a surprise. Heat waves in April aren’t black swans. Even geopolitical and security disruptions, while unpredictable, follow recognisable patterns. Yet Indian cricket continues to treat these as isolated “incidents” rather than as interconnected risks that can be anticipated, priced, and managed.
This is not about fog or heat. It’s about running a ₹20,000-crore system without an enterprise risk framework. So I’m doing an ISO 31000 evaluation for the BCCI. FOR FREE. Please someone share this with anyone influential in the BCCI.
Here’s a non-comprehensive list of some risk sources and events that can happen. You can skim through it if you like, I know it’s long, which already tells you lots:
Risk Category
Specific Risk
Example/Evidence
Risk Source
Impact Area
Geopolitical & Security
Cross-border conflict/military escalation
IPL 2025 suspension due to India-Pakistan tensions (May 2025)1
Political/regulatory external context
Tournament suspension, revenue loss, player safety concerns
Geopolitical & Security
Communal/religious tensions
Mustafizur Rahman threats from Ujjain religious leaders (Dec 2025);2
Social/political external context
Player threats, stadium disruptions, player unavailability
Negative sentiment from cancellations, perceived mismanagement
Communications/perception risk
Brand damage, sponsor pressure, fan retention loss
Health & Safety
Pandemic-related restrictions
COVID-like scenarios requiring lockdowns or capacity restrictions
Health emergency/external event
Match cancellation, venue capacity limits, player quarantine requirements
Health & Safety
Food/water safety incidents
Contaminated food/water affecting teams or spectators
Health/hygiene risk
Illness outbreaks, regulatory action, liability
Health & Safety
Air quality/pollution issues
High pollution affecting visibility, player respiratory health
Environmental hazard
Match visibility issues, player health concerns, match cancellation
Before diving into solutions, let’s define what we’re actually talking about. ISO 3107310 establishes the vocabulary for various terms used in ISO 31000,11 which is the ISO framework for risk management. According to the frameworks, risk is “the effect of uncertainty on objectives”. Here,
Objectives are whatever results the organisation wishes to achieve.
Effect means a deviation from the expected, whether the deviation is positive, negative, or both;
Uncertainty occurs from a deficit of information; and
Therefore, risk is a deviation from the aims that an entity is working towards caused due to lack of knowledge about the situations surrounding the objective. The deviation can have a positive or negative outcome, but the deviation means it is still a risk, and leads to risk consequences, or outcomes that affect the objectives.
Uncertainty can never be removed entirely. As we see in the normal distribution, risk events can happen even when we are 99.999% certain of our processes. This is called residual risk, or when a risk event occurs even when controls have been applied against the risk source. An event is the occurrence or change of circumstances (the bridge collapses, prices spike, new regulations take effect that can be the source of a risk. A risk source is an element with potential to give rise to risk (think: aging infrastructure, volatile commodity prices, regulatory change). Understanding residual risk is critical for determining whether further treatment is needed or whether the organisation should accept and monitor what remains. It is important to emphasise here that everyone perceives risk differently (risk perception): engineers might see technical risks as manageable; the public might see the same risks as terrifying. Effective risk communication requires understanding these perceptual differences.
The likelihood of an event, is a broad expression of the chance of something happening, and can be expressed qualitatively or quantitatively, but in the previous posts we have understood what a probability is, as expressed between 0 and 1 (here and here), and frequency, which is when we count the number of the type of events we are quantifying. understanding these basic terms helps us understand how vulnerable we are due to our exposure to a source of risk, as well as how to build resilience. Because we’re discussing a standard, these words have specific definitions:
Vulnerability refers to intrinsic properties creating susceptibility to risk sources.
Exposure measures the extent to which an organization is subject to an event.
Resilience captures adaptive capacity in complex, changing environments, so this isn’t about preventing events, it’s about how to recover from them.
Understanding risk also helps organisations understand which risks to accept, and which to defend against. New Zealand’s sports sector adopted ISO 31000 in 2016; Australia’s sporting associations follow it; international sporting events apply it to pandemic preparedness. This is called Risk attitude- the organisation’s overall approach towards risk, and their tendency to pursue, avoid, or accept it. Attitudes towards risk always depend upon any entity’s risk appetite (the amount and type of risk they are willing to accept), and their risk tolerance, which looks at specific risks for each objective. An example of risk appetite is the willingness to invest in innovative technology, and that of risk tolerance is the amount of specific risk an organisation may accept for data breaches in particular.
ISO 31000 Framework for Indian Cricket While it may appear that these are all just the costs of doing business in India, I don’t think this is true. Also, other sports systems facing similar uncertainties—pandemics, extreme weather, terrorism, financial volatility—don’t operate this way. They use formal risk management frameworks to decide what to avoid, what to mitigate, what to insure, and what to accept. ISO 31000 is one such framework, and it’s suited to complex, multi-stakeholder systems like Indian cricket. Here it is applied to Indian cricket:
Venue operators: own stadium safety, crowd management, emergency response.
Communication & consultation
Regular briefings with teams, broadcasters, police, local authorities.
Clear public communication on cancellations, rescheduling, and safety decisions.
Monitoring
Track near‑misses (e.g. small crushes at gates, close calls with fog or heat).
Maintain dashboards: incidents per season, delays, injuries, corruption alerts.
5. Review & Continuous Improvement (What Did We Learn This Season?)
After each season / major incident:
Incident reviews
IPL suspension: What early warning signs did we miss? Could we have acted sooner?
Chinnaswamy stampede: Which design and process failures led to casualties?
Lucknow fog‑out: How should scheduling rules change for fog‑prone venues?
Mustafizur threats: How do we handle politically sensitive players and venues?
Effectiveness checks
Did our treatments reduce likelihood or consequence as expected?
Did any controls fail or create new risks (e.g. over‑policing crowds)?
Update the system
Revise risk criteria, appetite, and tolerances where needed.
Amend scheduling policies, venue standards, insurance terms, and contracts.
Feed lessons into next season’s planning: same framework, better parameters.
To-Do List If Indian cricket embraced systematic risk management, the BCCI would have:
A Risk Management Policy (BCCI document) establishing appetite and tolerance
A Risk Register (updated quarterly) tracking all relevant risk categories with assessed severity and treatment strategies
Incident Response Protocols that trigger automatically (e.g., if weather forecast shows fog, reserve dates activate; if geopolitical tension rises, security protocols engage)
Venue Certification requiring regular safety audits for all stadiums
Insurance covering defined scenarios with unambiguous language
Player Education on corruption risks, mental health impacts of uncertainty, safety protocols
Stakeholder Transparency (fans, sponsors, broadcasters informed about residual risks and mitigation strategies)
Continuous Learning (post-incident reviews feeding into policy updates)
Why bother? Risks are interconnected: geopolitics affects scheduling, which affects logistics, which affects player welfare, which affects performance, which affects revenue. One shock propagates through the entire system.
But the real argument is how all this affects BCCI’s income: In fiscal year 2024-25, the BCCI earned a total of ₹20,686 crore—double what it was five years earlier. But this income doesn’t flow uniformly. It comes from multiple sources, each vulnerable to different risks:
IPL: ₹5,761 crore (59.1% of FY 2024-25 BCCI revenue)12
International cricket (men’s): ₹361 crore (3.7%)12
Created cascading effects on domestic Ranji Trophy schedules
Disrupted team preparation windows for the Asia Cup (subsequently postponed)
When the IPL shut down due to the events that followed the Pahalgam terrorism, one risk event rippled across all BCCI’s operations. The ₹3,500-4,000 crore total ecosystem loss wasn’t borne by IPL alone—it distributed across broadcasters, sponsors, franchises, international teams visiting India, and state cricket associations that depend on BCCI’s distributions (approximately ₹100-125 crore in combined sponsorship, broadcast, and match-day revenue for 16 matches15 and the broadcaster JioCinema faced losses of ₹1,900-2,000 crore (35% of their ₹5,500 crore seasonal projection)17 While war is a systemic risk (read more here, scroll down to the risk sections), a stampede at a celebration event is not.
Now let’s do some hypothetical maths. Let’s say of BCCI’s total ₹20,686 crore exposure, 10% is under difficult-to-avoid-risk, and another 20% are things that could go wrong but if everything happened normally (planes flew on time, luggage was not lost, people had common sense, etc.) it would not go wrong. Now assume costs of mitigation to be between 10-20% of the cost of losses. This would be the breakdown of that exposure:
Risk Category
% of Total Exposure
Exposure Amount (₹ Crore)
Annual Loss Probability
Expected Annual Loss (₹ Crore)
Mitigation Cost (10-20% of loss)
Net Benefit if Mitigated
High Risk (Geopolitical, Corruption, Major Infrastructure)
10%
₹2,068.6
20-30%
₹414-620
₹41-124
₹290-579
Medium Risk (Weather, Logistics, Personnel, Sponsorship)
20%
₹4,137.2
30-40%
₹1,241-1,655
₹124-331
₹910-1,531
Low Risk (Normal operations)
70%
₹14,480.2
1-5%
₹145-724
₹15-145
₹130-709
TOTAL
100%
₹20,686
~15-20% aggregate
₹1,800-3,000
₹180-600
₹1,200-2,820
Now let’s do scenario analysis with ILLUSTRATIVE NUMBERS.
Scenario A – No Mitigation (Do Nothing)
Element
Amount (₹ Crore)
Notes
Reserves/ Bank Balance
₹20,686
Baseline
Expected Losses (unmitigated)
₹1,800-3,000
From Table 1
Insurance Recovery (40-50% of losses)
₹720-1,500
Partial coverage; war/corruption not covered
Net Loss After Insurance
₹1,080-2,280
Uninsured exposure
Effective Revenue After Losses
₹18,406-19,606
Revenue minus net loss
Annual Cost to Organization
₹0
No prevention investment
Net Outcome
₹18,406-19,606
Revenue minus losses
Scenario B – Full Mitigation (Invest in Risk Management)
Element
Amount (₹ Crore)
Notes
Reserves/ Bank Balance
₹20,686
Baseline (unchanged)
Mitigation Investment
₹180-600
Cost to prevent/reduce losses
Expected Losses (with mitigation)
₹450-900
Reduced by 60-75% through mitigation
Insurance Recovery (40-50%)
₹180-450
Still applicable, lower losses
Net Loss After Insurance & Mitigation
₹270-450
Dramatically reduced
Effective Revenue After Mitigation & Losses
₹20,236-20,416
Revenue minus mitigation cost and net loss
Annual Cost to Organization
₹180-600
Mitigation investment
Net Outcome
₹20,236-20,416
Much better than Scenario A
None of the above means that BCCI doesn’t do risk mitigation at all. They must do. Matches are insured, security is coordinated with state authorities, schedules are adjusted, and contingency plans exist. But much of this risk management remains reactive, fragmented, and event-specific, rather than systematic.
The scale of Indian cricket has outgrown this approach. What is now a ₹20,000-crore ecosystem operates across volatile geopolitics, increasingly extreme climate conditions, aging infrastructure, fragile logistics, and intense public scrutiny. In such an environment, risk does not arrive as isolated shocks. It propagates. A fog-out affects scheduling, which affects logistics, which affects player welfare, which affects performance, which ultimately affects revenue and credibility. Treating each disruption as an unfortunate exception misses the underlying structure of the problem.
Active risk management does not promise certainty, nor does it eliminate risk. What it offers is clarity: an explicit understanding of working to anticipate risks in our cricket system so that most can simply be prevented, and those that cannot be prevented are mitigated. The IPL did not need to be part of India’s war theatre. After the Pahalgam attacks those matches could have been shifted to lower risk areas, such as away from the border, and we wouldn’t have had Ricky Ponting trying to persuade foreigners to stay back and play.18
One day, a young Talib beat Laila with a radio antenna. When he was done, he gave a final whack to the back of her neck and said, “I see you again, I’ll beat you until your mother’s milk leaks out of your bones.” – A passage from the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, which describes the lives of two fictional Afghan women.1
While the above quote is said to a fictional woman in a novel, the reality is that in just the past 12 months, Afghanistan’s Taliban government has: 1. Codified 35 restrictive articles banning women’s voices in public, requiring full Arabic-style hijab, and prohibiting depiction of humans or animals in media. Women may not travel, study, or appear in public spaces without a male guardian (mahram).2 2. Mandated that women adopt “Arabic hijab style” within five days, with imprisonment for violators. Families are held responsible for non-compliance.3 3. Prohibited women from entering three district parks, extending the preexisting national ban.3 4. Criminalised women speaking or singing audibly in public, across broadcast and real-life settings.4 5. Prohibited women from afternoon medical visits without male accompaniment, severely restricting access to care in provinces like Badakhshan.5 6. Authorised arrests of women and men for “moral corruption”; 38 arrests reported in nine provinces.6 7. Expelled all female medical students from health training colleges nationwide.7 8. Prohibited shopkeepers from talking to female customers in Takhar and Nangarhar provinces to “protect modesty”.8 9. Ordered women to block home windows to avoid being seen by neighbors.9 10. Blocked Hazara-led religious ceremonies in Bamyan and Daykundi Provinces ahead of Ashura.10 11. Facilitated dispossession of Hazara farmlands for Kuchi nomads under “historic restitution” justifications; over 25,000 displaced in 2024–25.11 12. Diverted international rations away from Hazara-majority central highlands to Pashtun-controlled areas.11 13. Marginalised Shia observances by defining “permissible Islamic behavior” under Sunni Hanafi doctrines.12
In all, in the past few months, Afghanistan’s Taliban government has entrenched a dual system of apartheid– gender and sectarian- now recognised by experts as constituting crimes against humanity and genocide risk indicators according to the UN and Human Rights Watch.
And yet, cricket remains nearly entirely silent.
ICC’s policy on political intervention in cricket The International Cricket Council (ICC) is cricket’s international governing body. It claims to uphold the autonomy of cricket via its official policy, which prohibits political appointments and undue government interference in the administration of national cricket boards, favouring free elections and board independence,13 and they can suspend a country’s membership for government meddling, with bans or warnings applied until compliance is restored.14
Here are some recent examples of this policy in action:
Zimbabwe (2019): The ICC suspended Zimbabwe Cricket for failing to ensure no government interference in its cricket administration, barring their teams from ICC events until the suspension was lifted.15
Sri Lanka (2024): Sri Lanka Cricket was suspended by the ICC due to evidence of government interference, including the sacking of board officials and attempts at regulatory control.16
The South Africa Precedent One does wonder what the difference is between apartheid South Africa, and present-day Afghanistan in ICC’s eyes.
In 1970, the ICC banned South Africa from international cricket due to racial apartheid policies that prevented non-white players from representing the national team and subjected touring players of color to discriminatory treatment.1718 This ban remained in effect for 21 years, until Nelson Mandela’s release and the dismantling of apartheid in 1991.1718
The ICC maintained the ban despite South Africa’s 1976 attempt to desegregate cricket through the formation of a non-racial governing body, the South African Cricket Union.1718 Only after apartheid’s complete dismantling and at the personal request of Nelson Mandela was South Africa readmitted to the ICC and Test cricket in 1991.17
Here’s a comparison of the actions of the Taliban government in Afghanistan with those of some other comparable governments:
Category
Taliban Afghanistan (2024–2025)
Apartheid South Africa (1948–1991)
Nazi Germany (1933–1945)
Myanmar Junta vs Rohingya (2016–Present)
Basis of Oppression
Gender, ethnicity, and religion (women, Hazaras, Shia, Tajiks)
Race and ethnicity (Black Africans, Coloureds, Indians)
Apparently not an apartheid according to the powers that be in Cricket
Negotiating with terrorists It’s evident that the ICC believes in being gentle with cricket’s resident terrorists. In April 2025, the ICC confirmed it would not cut funding to the Afghanistan Cricket Board and would instead “pursue dialogue and constructive engagement”.42 An ICC spokesperson told Sky News: “We are committed to leveraging our influence constructively to support the Afghanistan Cricket Board in fostering cricket development and ensuring playing opportunities for both men and women in Afghanistan”.43
Naturally, this approach has yielded no progress.
The India Connection I believe India’s geopolitics is directly shaping the ICC’s approach to Afghanistan, a pattern evident across multiple recent ICC decisions.
India is responsible for a large part of the ICC’s global revenue,44 primarily through the BCCI and the massive domestic cricket market, and Jay Shah, the son of Indian Home Minister Amit Shah, was elected unopposed as ICC chairman in December 2024, after serving as BCCI secretary and Asian Cricket Council chief.45 India has helped build Afghanistan’s cricketing infrastructure, provided technical training, hosted Afghan teams, funded stadiums, and arranged commercial sponsorships.46
While India does not formally recognise the Taliban government in Afghanistan,47 it (we the citizens, our elected politicians) have adopted a policy of “engagement without recognition.”4849 This means India maintains working diplomatic and economic relations with the Taliban regime, while refraining from granting it official, de jure legitimacy.49 We engage with the Taliban government as the de facto authority in Kabul for practical and strategic reasons, therefore granting it legitimacy.
India’s activities in Afghanistan under the Taliban include diplomatic representation, large-scale humanitarian aid, development assistance, and ongoing political dialogue, especially to safeguard its security and regional interests.50 This approach mirrors India’s policies towards other regimes like the Myanmar junta and Taiwan: open channels for practical coordination, yet withholding formal recognition, consistent with international law on diplomatic relations.5152
However, In October 2025, following the visit of Taliban Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi to New Delhi, India announced the upgrading of its technical mission in Kabul to a full embassy, a clear sign of deepening engagement, despite the absence of formal recognition.53
At this point, please also note that I do understand that sanctions against Afghanistan would be less effective than those against apartheid South Africa because the Taliban government, unlike South Africa’s white minority regime, does not depend on international legitimacy or economic integration with cricket-playing nations, and yet if India cared about the girls, women and minorities being oppressed in Afghanistan, they would be banned from cricket.
But India needs a counterweight to Pakistani terrorism against India. Afghanistan under the Taliban serves as a strategic buffer and potential ally in India’s regional security calculations,54 and the Afghan women and minorities are simply not part of the consideration. And as we know, India’s power has affected ICC’s decisions previously.555657
What’s happening right now Australia remains the only country in cricket that has taken a stand on the matter by refusing to play bilateral matches, citing deep discomfort with the Taliban regime’s escalating crackdown on women’s rights and participation in sport. Since 2021, Cricket Australia has cancelled multiple series, most recently a T20 fixture in 2025.5859
Australia also hosts exiled women cricketers from Afghanistan, such as Benafsha Hashimi and Firooza Amiri, the latter of whom has pleaded that the ICC doesn’t even need to ban the Afghanistan men’s team: “Don’t ban the Afghanistan men’s side from playing international cricket but do expect them to do more for the women and girls who don’t have the same rights they do,” Amiri told ESPN, once again underlining cricket’s silence.60
In March 2025, Human Rights Watch addressed an open letter to ICC Chair Jay Shah, urging the council to suspend Afghanistan’s membership until women and girls regain access to education and sport. Minky Worden, HRW’s Director of Global Initiatives, argued that the ICC’s permissiveness “places it on the side of the Taliban, not the women cricketers in exile”.61
Human Rights Watch and several national cricket boards, including the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), have pressed the ICC to adopt a formal human rights policy aligned with UN principles, similar to frameworks now required by the International Olympic Committee (IOC).62 The IOC previously suspended Afghanistan’s Olympic Committee in 1999 for barring female athletes- an exact parallel to today’s situation.
Publicly, the council maintains support for the displaced Afghan women cricketers in exile but has stopped short of recognition or reallocation of resources to them.63 In April 2025, the ICC announced a separate initiative to support displaced Afghan women cricketers through a task force partnering with Cricket Australia, the England and Wales Cricket Board, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India.64 Critically, however, this new funding stream does not reduce or redirect any money from the ACB- the board responsible for excluding women continues to receive full funding.65
As of 2025, the ICC continues to provide the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) with approximately $17 million USD (£13 million) in annual funding, exclusively allocated to men’s cricket.66 This funding persists even as Afghanistan remains the only ICC full member without a women’s team.
Meanwhile, while the International Cricket Council continues to sleep on their job, 2.2 million girls remain banned from school and university education indefinitely.67
NB: I’m not expecting this to make any institutional changes. I’m not expecting any difference in the state of the suffering Afghans. I have no hope of anything getting better. I even understand the geopolitics and the realpolitik behind the Indian Government’s engagement with the terrorists- they’re trying to choose fewer terrorism deaths for Indians over people they are not morally responsible for. I’m writing because I’m exhausted. I’m tired of women paying the price and men absconding responsibility, even traveling the world playing goddamn cricket with impunity while at it. And I’m writing because who else will? The terrorised Afghans certainly cannot. The exiled Afghan cricketers can barely speak out even in a supposedly safe nation like Australia. But perhaps one day this piece may serve as the evidence that people knew what was happening, or even just show those who suffered that we saw them. You were not erased, my sisters.
Chasing Tales 