Asghar Afghan slams Tim Paine for “Boycott Afghanistan” comments

After coming across the comments, Asghar urged Paine to refrain from giving such statements and appealed all nations to support Afghanistan and its national team. He also stated that Paine made his statement without knowing the actual circumstances

Former Afghanistan captain Asghar Afghan slammed Australian Test captain Tim Paine for his ‘all teams should boycott’ comments at Afghanistan team ahead of T20 World Cup 2021, set to start from October 17 in Oman and UAE.

With the state of Afghanistan in political turmoil and the Taliban not in support of women’s cricket, Paine had stated that the current teams would not love to play against a country that is taking off opportunities from half of their population. Paine also asserted that there’s no word from the apex body ICC on the matter.

“I’d imagine it’s impossible (for Afghanistan to take part) if teams are pulling out of playing against them and governments are not letting them travel to our shores. How a team like that can be allowed to play in an ICC-sanctioned event is going to be very, very hard to see,” he had said.

After coming across the comments, Asghar urged Paine to refrain from giving such statements and appealed all nations to support Afghanistan and its national team. He also stated that Paine made his statement without knowing the actual circumstances.

He added, “In any case you are mistreating Afghan Cricket and all the gains we have obtained with hardship in the past decade. (Sports should be separated from politics)”
Afghanistan named its T20 World Cup squad on Thursday with Rashid Khan as the skipper, but the star spinner immediately resigned from captaincy, stating he was not consulted before picking the 15-member side.

Source: Read Full Article