Afghanistan prepares to make cricket history in World Cup

Martin Rogers | USA TODAY Sports

Cricket's World Cup is a curious thing. It starts tomorrow and runs until March 29, a veritable marathon that lasts 50% longer than soccer's World Cup, more than twice as long as the Olympics, and, globally, will be the most-watched sports event of the year.

All while registering scarcely a blip on the American mainstream sporting radar.

Yet the tournament, jointly hosted by Australia and New Zealand, boasts what could be an early contender for the most remarkable and unlikely sports storyline of 2015, as Afghanistan prepares to take on the world's best for the first time.

Cricket in Afghanistan had no organized structure to speak of a decade ago, the majority of its national team grew up in refugee camps in neighboring Pakistan, rockets fly overhead at training sessions and arranging visas for players to travel to international competitions involves a jungle of red tape.

However, as the event starts on Friday (5 p.m. ET) Afghanistan finds itself among the 14-team field and preparing for its opening match against Bangladesh in Canberra next Tuesday.

"It is hard to explain what it is like to people who haven't been there," said head coach Andy Moles, an Englishman who previously coached New Zealand and moved to Kabul in September when a former coach stepped down. "Our players' lives have been very different to other World Cup cricketers. They have been through a lot to get here."

Moles was joined by an assistant, former Australian pro Peter Anderson, at the start of this year, and the pair have been in a race against time to get the squad ready to take on cricket's strongest nations, like Australia, England and India.

Their challenge has been to hone the huge appetite and passion for the sport that is prevalent in Afghan society into tangible success, all while negotiating the logistical hurdles of a country that still has huge security issues and widespread instability.

"It is a war torn country," Anderson told Australia's Courier Mail newspaper. "War is ever-present."

While in Kabul, Moles and Anderson are restricted to their hotel rooms for most of their non-training hours, have a permanent security detail and pass up to eight checkpoints per day on the way to and from practice sessions.

Before accepting the job, against the advice of friends, Moles asked the Afghanistan Cricket Board in his interview whether the Taliban approves of cricket. Apparently it does, as so does pretty much everyone else in the country.

The national team players are genuine sporting heroes in Afghanistan, being surrounded by wellwishers whenever they venture out in public.

Team captain Mohammad Nabi grew up in a Pakistani refugee camp following the Soviet invasion of the country, learning to play cricket with sticks, a battered tennis ball and wooden crates. After gaining acceptance into a local men's team, his skills attracted the attention of a touring English side and led to a cricket scholarship in Britain.

Fellow national team player Nawroz Khan Mangal was another child of the camps and remembers the excitement when Pakistan won the World Cup in 1992. Like other refugees, he continued playing cricket when he returned to Kabul and is determined to give his compatriots something to celebrate over the coming weeks.

"We know the people will be watching us and we play for them," Mangal said. "We want to give them something to be proud of and to represent the name of Afghanistan."

Afghanistan's chance is right now – in an attempt to reduce the number of potentially one-sided matches, international cricket chiefs will reduce the field from 14 teams to 10 for the next World Cup in 2019. Qualifying for that event, therefore, will be exponentially more difficult.

Making an impact this time around will be Afghanistan's best way to gain attention, and to earn itself future international matches against higher-rated teams that could boost its ranking.

"We are ready," Nabi said. "We are ready for everything."

He was talking about cricket, but his words could have applied just as easily to his life, and those of his teammates.