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Australia has pulled out of its upcoming males’s one-day worldwide sequence towards Afghanistan, citing additional restrictions on girls’s rights imposed within the nation by the Taliban.
Australia had been set to fulfill Afghanistan within the United Arab Emirates for 3 matches in March however, following session with the Australian authorities and different stakeholders, Cricket Australia has determined to scrap the sequence.
When the capital metropolis Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021, the extremist group banned girls from enjoying sport on the grounds that doing so would contravene Islamic legal guidelines requiring their hair and pores and skin to be coated.
In a press release on Thursday, CA stated the choice to withdraw from the boys’s ODI sequence adopted latest Taliban restrictions positioned on girls’s and ladies’ schooling and employment alternatives and their potential to entry parks and gymnasiums.
“CA is dedicated to supporting rising the sport for men and women all over the world, together with in Afghanistan, and can proceed to have interaction with the Afghanistan Cricket Board in anticipation of improved situations for ladies and ladies within the nation,” CA stated.
“We thank the Australian authorities for its help on this matter.”
Afghan quick bowler Naveen ul Haq Murid known as the choice “infantile” and accused Australia of taking away Afghans’ solely purpose for happiness as an alternative of being supportive.
The Afghanistan Cricket Board stated it might situation a press release in a while Thursday.
The cancellation of the sequence comes after Australia cited comparable causes for scrapping a one-off Take a look at towards Afghanistan that had been set to be performed in Hobart in November 2021.
In December, the Taliban banned girls from finishing increased schooling, having prohibited attendance at gyms and parks a month earlier.
In response to the United Nations, girls are additionally banned from attending faculty past the sixth grade and dealing most jobs outdoors their houses.
In November 2021, the ICC shaped a working group aiming to help and overview girls’s and males’s cricket in Afghanistan however greater than a yr later, the nation stays the one full member of the ICC and not using a totally operational girls’s group.
ICC CEO Geoff Allardice stated this week that latest crackdowns had been worrying.
“Our board has been monitoring progress for the reason that change of regime,” he stated.
“It’s a concern that progress shouldn’t be being made in Afghanistan and it is one thing our board will think about at its subsequent assembly in March.”
The cancellation limits Australia’s match apply forward of October’s ODI World Cup to a five-match sequence towards South Africa and a three-match sequence towards host nation India.
– with AP
