Cricket Gives a Nation Bowed by Violence a Reason to Stand Tall

The national flag they play under no longer exists officially. The anthem they stand for at the beginning of every game belongs to a republic that was toppled two years ago.

Yet Afghanistan’s athletes have become the unlikely — and widely celebrated — heroes of the Cricket World Cup that is underway in India. In a tournament followed by hundreds of millions of people across the globe, they have defeated the defending world champions and two former titleholders handily. Some of the team’s stars are so popular that entire stadium sections roar their name. When they win, players sing and dance from the dugout, to the team bus, to their hotel rooms.

The Afghan cricket team’s accomplishments are amplifying what has already been an astonishingly speedy rise in sports history. They also speak to the potential of a nation marked by frequent violent ruptures if it had a little bit of what this team has managed: continuity.

To play in this World Cup, the team has relied on delicate compromise, something that evaded Afghanistan’s political leaders and the many international stakeholders who failed to halt the country’s descent into a pariah state. The bizarreness of the circumstances is drowned out by the team’s success.