Afghanistan beat England at the 2023 World Cup comprehensively despite the schedules offered to them, not because of them.
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Two editions and a bit into the World Cup, Afghanistan’s tally stood at fourteen defeats in fifteen attempts. The solitary win had come against Scotland – a side that has won one World Cup match fewer than even Afghanistan.
They were not supposed to beat England, the defending world champions – not only in this format but also in T20 cricket, and the side that has, through two different coach-captain combinations, revolutionised red- and white-ball cricket over the years.
It was an upset, but not as much as when you think the ODI scheduling Afghanistan had been subjected to since the last World Cup.
Let us not get into Test cricket here. Afghanistan, despite having Test status, are not part of the World Test Championship. Nobody is obliged to play them or their Full Member twin Ireland, or even Zimbabwe, who had attained Test status three decades ago.
Whether Afghanistan should be a Full Member at all is another subject. They should not, as we have discussed in these pages. We shall keep this to ODI scheduling.
Between the 2019 and 2023 World Cups, Afghanistan have played 29 ODIs, the fewest of all Full Members. In fact, every other team has played at least 36; and if you leave out Pakistan, that count goes up to 40. At the other end of the spectrum, India have played 66 ODIs.
True, Afghanistan have problems of their own. They do not host international cricket. Australia boycotted a series against them earlier this year.
Add to that the fact that ODIs took a backseat in every country since the last World Cup. Once the world recovered from the pandemic, they played out two editions of each of the World Test Championship and the T20 World Cup. In other words, they had proper Test cricket and T20I schedules, and ODIs were pushed to the background.
However, as mentioned above, Afghanistan were among the three countries without a Test schedule. Since Ireland played 43 ODIs (what New Zealand played) and Zimbabwe 40 (the same as South Africa), Afghanistan’s 29 is woefully small number.
Of Afghanistan’s 29 ODIs, seven were against each of Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, while the West Indies, the Netherlands, Zimbabwe, and Ireland account for three each. Neither of these sides feature in the top six of the ICC rankings.
That leaves three matches – their series against Pakistan earlier this year. Between the 2019 World Cup and the warm-up matches of the 2023 edition, thus, Afghanistan played only three matches against a top opposition.
It is perhaps this that makes their win against England even more incredible.
Afghanistan are unlike other Test-playing nations. They are the only one in that elite set to have not learnt cricket from the British. Cricket was not a natural sport for them until the Afghan refugees in Pakistan picked up the sport. The Afghan Cricket Federation was founded in Pakistan.
While the Taliban resisted the idea of sport in general (including the extremely popular buzkashi), they allowed cricket. Afghanistan became an ICC Affiliate in 2001, and rose at an astonishing rate to gain ODI status in 2009.
When they toured the world for cricket, kits and resources used to be sparse. The odds they played against, the background of the cricketers – some of them grew up in military camps – would have been unrelatable to cricketers from Full Members.
They are, thus, no strangers to overcoming hurdles, cricketing or otherwise. This time, they had to do with four years of barely any ODI practice against top opposition.
That did not prevent from beating the world champions at the grandest stage of all – amidst news of earthquakes rocking the nation arriving before the match.
Can you imagine what they could have done with the resources at the disposal of the other sides?
