Previously controversial, now Proteas vs Afghanistan is just a cricket match

South Africa face Afghanistan in their Champions Trophy opener on Friday with chatter about boycotts now muted.

It was on January 9 that Gayton McKenzie released a statement calling on Cricket SA to boycott the Proteas’ fixture with Afghanistan because of what he called ‘gender apartheid’, which was and still is being practised by the Taliban regime that rules Afghanistan. 

It followed reports two days earlier of a letter written by anti-apartheid campaigner Peter Hain to CSA also calling for a boycott of the match by the Proteas.   

Around the same time 160 British MPs had demanded the England team boycott its match scheduled for February 26. 

The MPs, Hain and McKenzie are now all silent, distracted by Trump, war and an untabled budget. Their calls can now be seen for what they were — grandstanding that paid no heed to the mechanisms available to them, which could have had far more damaging effects on the Taliban.

The ICC, which oversees the running of the Champions Trophy and also — supposedly — governs the sport, has made flimsy noises about dealing with the Afghan issue for the past three years. There are 25 female cricketers from Afghanistan who went into exile after the Taliban retook control of that country in August 2021. Twenty two of them are in Australia, where arguably the most significant cricket match this year took place in Melbourne at the end of January, involving them playing against a local invitation side. 

In the fortnight before the Champions Trophy, the volume about Afghanistan’s continued status in cricket was decreased, but the same problems that motivated Hain, McKenzie and those British MPs to demand a boycott still exist. 

Citizens are flogged in stadiums, women can’t speak in public, an underground radio station featuring female hosts was shut down, and how women dress continues to be policed. 

Meanwhile the Taliban have met the Indian government and just this week a senior delegation arrived in Japan for talks about human rights and greater political inclusivity. 

On the cricket front, the ICC remains flaky on the topic. It has the Afghanistan Cricket Task Force, led by deputy chairman Imran Khwaja, that is “leading ongoing dialogue” on the matter.

Their own rules seem simple enough to enforce. As a full member of the ICC — thus having Test status — Afghanistan’s cricket authorities have to use a portion of the funding they receives from the ICC for a women’s programme and to contract women cricketers. 

But despite that not being the case, the Afghan Cricket Board still gets its money from the ICC. 

Afghanistan’s men’s team, one of the great success stories of sport, continues to be allowed to play, even as individuals like Rashid Khan and Mohammad Nabi have called for restrictions on women in their country to be lifted. 

Expecting the ICC to take a stance on a subject this volatile, when its leader — Jay Shah — is so obviously biased because of his father’s senior position in the Indian government, should surprise no-one. This is after all an organisation that appears to have given up governing the game and rather turned into what the great West Indies fast bowler and former commentator Michael Holding first described as an ‘events management company’.

In the case of the Champions Trophy it can’t even do that properly, because as it stands no-one knows where the final of the tournament will take place on March 9. 

Proteas captain Temba Bavuma was not asked a question about boycotts in his brief prematch media engagement in Karachi on Thursday.

He has previously talked about the importance of equality in the sport, but there is little else he can do as part of a professional team. There are mechanisms in place to deal with such issues, but the ICC chooses not to use them — mainly because of political expediency.

South Africa may win or it may lose to Afghanistan, and if it’s the latter they’ll be called chokers again. But it won’t matter, it’s not the most important issue surrounding this match or tournament. It never was.

All the Champions Trophy squads, groups and fixtures here