Should We Play Afghanistan?

Yes, but with a caveat

This week, England then Australia do something they would rather not - they play Afghanistan in the Champions Trophy, tomorrow night and Friday night respectively. They’re reluctant not because Afghanistan marmalised England at the ODI World Cup, then Australia at the T20 World Cup, but due to the rigidly enforced masculine supremacism of Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban.

The England Cricket Board and Cricket Australia have specified that they won’t play Afghanistan bilaterally. But here there are points at stake, and money. No, as Greg Barclay has observed, it doesn’t make an awful lot of sense; would Australia have played South Africa in the first four World Cups? It makes even less sense when Cricket Australia’s chairman Mike Baird says that he is ‘proud’ of this stance. I mean, you could be satisfied, or even comfortable, but what’s there to be proud of? It reminds me of George Bernard Shaw’s remark that an Englishman thinks he is being moral when he is merely feeling uncomfortable. Perhaps it applies to Australians too…..