Để tránh bị cấm, Afghanistan phải đối mặt với việc cầu lông nữ có thể không bao giờ khởi động lại trong thời điểm Taliban đang đứng đầu.

Afghanistan will avoid sanctions as realisation that women’s cricket is unlikely to restart any time soon amid oppressive Taliban rule renders the issue into the backburner.

The swift return of the hardline Islamists in 2021 effectively ended the fledgling women’s game in Afghanistan as a systematic chipping away of the rights of women and girls ensued.

They have been banned from playing all sports with members of Afghanistan’s fledgling women’s cricket team fleeing overseas after the Taliban’s takeover.

An International Cricket Council working group, led by veteran board director Imran Khwaja, was set up in late 2021 and tasked with investigating the situation in Afghanistan.

Khwaja met on several occasions with Afghanistan Cricket Board administrators and Taliban officials.

According to sources, the working group is unlikely to present an update on the situation at the upcoming ICC meetings in Durban, South Africa, in an indication that the issue is in a stalemate.

The working group is set to remain intact with members hoping to renew discussion with Taliban officials down the track.

The grim prospects for women’s cricket restarting in Afghanistan has stirred debate over whether sanctions should be handed down.

Cricket Australia has been the only board publicly – and privately, according to sources – to voice disapproval and acted by cancelling bilateral series with Afghanistan.

Development and pathway structures for women’s cricket are meant to be part of strict criteria for Full Membership, which Afghanistan received in 2017 on the proviso that women’s cricket would be developed.

But there has been little appetite all along for Afghanistan to be stripped of coveted Full Member status awarded to just 12 cricket nations granted more funding and power.

“There is nothing the Afghanistan board can do, it’s not in their hands,” an administrator privy to the situation told me. “Apart from Australia, it’s not a divisive issue (on the ICC board).

“Women’s cricket can only restart when the Taliban are more inclusive of women in society.”

The working group has been satisfied that the troubled and cash-stricken ACB, which has been hit by in-fighting and factions in a bid for control, is not being interfered by the Taliban.

“Cricket is the only sport in Afghanistan – one of the few things that connect the country,” said Ross McCollum, who is on the working group and Ireland’s ICC board representative, told me earlier this year.

“Do we really want to ban them from playing?”

Initially built in the 1990s by players returning home from refugee camps in Pakistan, cricket ascended to being the most popular sport in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan gained Affiliate membership in 2001 just a year after the ban on the sport was lifted by the Taliban. They gained a cult-like following worldwide due to boasting a slew of effervescent players with the men’s team becoming a source of pride for the war-torn country.

“I remember before when I travelled the world and introduced myself as an Afghan, people would be reluctant to interact with me,” former ACB chief executive Shafiq Stanikzai once told me.

“But we gained momentum and respect through cricket…we are now proud to be from Afghanistan. My biggest worry is that we lose our identity.”

There doesn’t seem like there will be any threat to Afghanistan playing international men’s cricket or losing its status as an ICC Full Member.

But the pall of women’s cricket in Afghanistan will likely gnaw uneasily in the backdrop. It’s an issue that will undoubtedly continue to confront the sport’s administrators so long as the ruthless Taliban regime holds sway.