Rizwan Ull-Hayat doesn’t think twice before tanking up the generator. It’s the night his favourite Indian Premier League (IPL) team, Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), will take to the field. And he doesn’t want to miss seeing his favourite players in action for even a second; not even an erratic power supply could play spoilsport.

Ull-Hayat could easily pass off as just another Indian bitten by the IPL mania bug. Except that the 23-year-old lives in Nangarhar province of Afghanistan.

For a country — and its people — who are still in the process of rebuilding themselves after over 30 years of war, IPL is the stuff that dreams are made of.

Shafiqullah Asmat Stanikzai, the Afghanistan cricket team’s manager, claims that “almost every person” in the country is glued to the TV set each time an IPL match plays out.

Ali Ahmed Darwish, 26, a manager in an oil company in Kabul, suggests a more modest figure. “Almost 80% of Afghans watch the IPL religiously. We have even managed to get a satellite TV connection at work to watch the afternoon matches.”

In other parts of Afghanistan, fans like Ull-Hayat raise the zeal up a notch. “Everybody here (Nangarhar) watches the matches and since the power supply is not regular, all of us arrange for enough oil just before a match to run our generators till the end of the game,” explains Ull-Hayat, who works as a finance manager at a company in Nangarhar, casually, like it’s no effort at all.

Darwish agrees. “Kabul is the only city where there is a regular power supply. I know so many people in other places who watch matches through fuel-run generators.”

And on days when even the generators fail, some fans head to a neighbour’s house or get an over-by-over update from friends or relatives through mobile phones.

Who are they cheering?KKR seems to be the toast of the nation. But the fondness has more to do with team owner and Bollywood actor Shahrukh Khan's Pathan lineage (his paternal grandfather was from Afghanistan) than the line-up of players.

Another team, Royal Challengers Bangalore (RCB), has begun to slowly gain popularity, riding on the shoulders of one player — Chris Gayle. “I really wish they (RCB) win this time. But before that, I wish I could go to India, watch them thrash Chennai and avenge the recent defeat,” says Sohail Yusufzai, 23, from Kabul.

The opinion is divided within the national cricket team. While the manager is rooting for KKR, he says each team player’s preference differs on the basis of whom he looks up to in the Indian squad. The wicketkeeper-batsman, for example, is rooting for Chennai Super Kings just because he is an ardent fan of captain MS Dhoni.

Why the fuss over IPL?Love for Indian actors and cricketers apart, the IPL craze is fuelled by the belief that it is a way out of a despondent state of affairs in a war-ravaged country. Under the Taliban rule, sports were banned.

“Afghans love Indian cricketers, from Rahul Dravid to Dhoni. Our players watch almost every match and they want to be part of the IPL,” says Stanikzai. “We’re in desperate need of help to change the face of the game in our country, which we’ve sought from the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India). We look up to the Indians and we’ll be grateful if the BCCI backs us the way Ireland and Scotland are backed by the ECB (England and Wales Cricket Board).”

To most Afghans, the smallest chance of seeing their players in the IPL simply offers a ray of hope for putting their lives back together.