. The Afghanistan women’s team, made up of nationally contracted players who had to escape their home country in fear of their lives when the Taliban took over in 2021, assembled from their new homes in Melbourne and Canberra to play their first match as a complete side against a charity Cricket Without Borders team at Junction Oval.
They put in a decent showing to make 103, which might have been higher had their best bat, Shazia Zazai, not been run out in a mix-up on 40 from 45 balls. Then without fielding at the highest standard, with a few catches going down, they took three wickets and managed to push the chase into the final over, going down with four balls to spare. None of them were deflated by the result, instead elated to have the chance to play, and mobbed by family and friends on the field during the post-match presentations.
They hope that this is just the beginning of their cricketing work. This is a team that have had to scrap and scrape by for everything they have, before Cricket Australia provided the support to get this match up and running and to invite all the players as guests at the Test match during the afternoon. The Australian women’s team, meanwhile, have a degree of luxury at the opposite end of the scale.
It was reflected in the peculiar XI that Australia put together for this Test. The captain, Alyssa Healy, is a wicketkeeper and an opening bat. She does both jobs in the white-ball sides, and more recently has dropped down the order in Tests to better focus on that first task. But despite hobbling around in a moon boot through the Twenty20 portion of the multi-format series, selectors decided that Healy was fit to play, but not fit to do either of her usual tasks.
That means …
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