Afghanistan Women’s Cricket: the team of refugees that will not be silenced

Thousands of miles away, Mel Jones was sitting in quarantine in an Australian hotel during the Covid-19 pandemic when he received a message from an Indian journalist asking if he had heard of the situation of the Afghan cricket team.

The players had looked at the Cricket Board Afghanistan (ACB) for assistance after the Taliban had not taken over but had not received it.

By alone, they were terrified under the domain of the hard Islamist group.

The journalist put Jones in touch with one of the players and asked if there was something he could do to help. The player replied to say that all his teammates and Backroom staff had to leave Afghanistan.

Jones, who won two cups in the world with Australia, then examined her contact book and brought the volunteers on board, including her friend Emma Staples, who worked for the Victoria cricket, and Dr. Catherine Ordway, who had contributed to evacuating Afghan footballers.

By creating a close network of people who could help, even on the ground in Afghanistan, they organized visas and transport to possibly bring 120 people out of the country, mainly in Pakistan and then on military flights to Dubai. From there they flew to Melbourne or Canberra on commercial flights supported by the Australian government.

“I don’t think I understood the enormity of what we were doing at that moment,” said Staples. “We were told that we may not be able to save everyone.

“For me, he was coordinating what we joke about now as an immigration service in the courtyard. He was archived visa documents, passport documents and trying to transfer money to Afghanistan for girls to buy passports.

“There were six weeks of collection of information from family members, trying to obtain identification, but we have just had this extraordinary sheet of calculation that has detailed everyone.”

He said that communication with the players was “really demanding” but “nothing that Google Translate could not solve”.

“Now we churish on the linguistic barrier, I called different names as” delicious “and other strange things,” said Staples with a smile.

“Everything happened so quickly for them that I don’t think they had time to think about what they had to leave behind. I have no doubt that some of them are going through Survivor’s fault.”

Jones, 52, who now works as a cricket broadcaster, said there were moments when it was not clear that the mission would be successful.

“We had to fight the system when everyone continued to say that it was impossible. Things were happening minute to minute,” said Jones.

“Without looking irreverent, there were moments that seemed in a Jason Bourne Movie,“He said, remembering that he tried to comment on television and also messages from a player who was fighting to find the right car that would save her.

“He could not find the car and was going to different people and I had to warn it that you cannot do it (for safety reasons), but then I had another period of comment, so I had to say ‘do nothing until I go back!’.

“This was the frightening part for me, just ensuring that they make the right decisions.”