Afghanistan Domestic cricket struggling due to ignorance from the national team cricketers

Generally, the emerging cricket countries don’t get many matches to play every year as compared to the more popular teams. This has been the norm forever. It has been three years since Afghanistan got Test status but their cricket calendar hasn’t really bustled with fixtures. It is only the famous T20 trio of Rashid Khan, […]
 
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Afghanistan Domestic cricket struggling due to ignorance from the national team cricketers

Generally, the emerging cricket countries don’t get many matches to play every year as compared to the more popular teams. This has been the norm forever. It has been three years since Afghanistan got Test status but their cricket calendar hasn’t really bustled with fixtures.

It is only the famous T20 trio of Rashid Khan, Mohammad Nabi and Mujeeb Ur Rahman who are busy as they represent a variety of T20 franchises around the world. One could say that their unavailability could also have played a part in Afghanistan not playing as many international games as even Ireland do.

Considering the fact that the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) isn’t really wealthy, they are unable to restrict these players from playing so many leagues. While Afghanistan isn’t able to play much international cricket, it doesn’t mean that they can’t play enough domestic cricket.

Afghanistan’s domestic calendar includes the Ahmed Shah Abdali 4-day Tournament (FC Competition), Ghazi Amanullah One-Day Tournament (Premier List A competition), Provincial Grade I Tournament (Additional List A competition which was established in 2019), Shpageeza T20 League and various other tournaments, including a 3-day Competition, which is just below the Ahmed Shah Abdali Tournament in terms of status.

Also Read: Rahmanullah Gurbaz – Ushering in the new age of Afghanistan cricket

Afghanistan Domestic cricket struggling due to ignorance from the national team cricketers

The Provincial Grade I Tournament is set to begin on August 13th with the competition marking the return of competitive cricket in Afghanistan.

If not for the coronavirus pandemic, Afghanistan could have had a decent few months with a 5-match T20I series in Zimbabwe being followed by the Asia Cup and the T20 World Cup in Australia. But, with the pandemic resulting in the cancellation of all these matches, the Afghan cricketers have not played much cricket for more than five months.

However, the Afghanistan national team personnel and also other fringe players who are close to national team selection have either skipped or completely ignored this tournament and the other domestic competitions for the past three years.

Afghanistan Domestic cricket struggling due to ignorance from the national team cricketers

It is only the Shpageeza T20 league that doesn’t get affected by player availability. As mentioned earlier, Afghanistan’s international commitments generally don’t exceed a duration of three or four months put together annually.

With the ICC only awarding First-Class and List A status in 2017, these domestic competitions are in its infancy stage and the quality of these tournaments can only slowly increase. But that doesn’t give the luxury to the Afghanistan national team players to skip them.

Some of these players including the likes of captain Asghar Afghan, former captain Gulbadin Naib don’t even feature in T20 leagues and play no cricket for almost 5-6 months in a year.

Also Read: Spin it to win it: Set template for Afghanistan aids T20I success

Asghar Afghan has not played a single FC match while he has only featured in three List A matches in three years. Even premier batsmen like Rahmat Shah and Najibullah Zadran have been guilty of ignoring domestic cricket with only one and two FC appearances to date.

It is to be reminded again that the problem doesn’t end with just these players but many more Afghanistan players who have either represented the team in the past or are still playing international cricket.

This doesn’t sound right especially when one realizes the fact that Afghanistan players have contracts with the ACB and don’t have to do another job, which is the case with most associate nations like the UAE and Oman.  

Such a lax attitude against domestic cricket not only devalues the structure and also slows the rate of development of both domestic cricket and also the upcoming cricketers but the national team players themselves have been found rusty when playing international cricket.

For example, when the Blue Tigers faced the West Indies in a one-off Test match last year, they were unable to tackle some quality spin bowling from Rahkeem Cornwall and Jomel Warrican. One wonders whether playing more first-class cricket would have helped these batsmen considering that each domestic team plays at least three quality spinners in the line-up.

Also Read: Shafiqullah Ghafari: Another teenage prodigy in Afghanistan’s long line of mystery spinners

Apart from the superstar T20 spinners that most fans would be aware of, the likes of Amir Hamza, Zia Ur Rehman, Abdul Wasi, Abdul Baqi, Jamshid, Zohaib Ahmad and others have racked up plenty of wickets in first-class cricket over the past three years.

Hamza, in fact, out bowled Rashid Khan and Zahir Khan in the West Indies Test match, which only goes on to show that there would definitely be an advantage in facing someone like him in a real-match scenario.

Overall too, if you look at the top cricketing countries like England, Australia and India, they have a domestic structure which enables consistent success. A few years ago, Sri Lanka used to churn out players from the school system but now they are unable to do it due to a poor domestic system.

Even Pakistan had to reform their domestic cricket recently as they were not seeing quality cricketers come out from the system. This shows how important domestic cricket is and the ACB has also tried to have as many matches but the players are being a thorn in their efforts.

If we compare such attitude with a player like Ravichandran Ashwin who tries his best to make himself available for not just domestic cricket but even his club side, it reflects poorly on the Afghanistan players.

It is not just Ashwin, a number of other players from around the world can be mentioned because ambitious athletes don’t like to rest at all.

It is high time that the Afghanistan national team players who are supposed to be the best in the country realise the importance of their involvement in domestic cricket so that the nation can continue its rapid growth in the sport.

If this doesn’t happen, Afghanistan could have issues in the near future where they might be either getting undercooked players from the domestic level and that would naturally mean that the nation will struggle at the highest level.