On a scorching morning at Clarence House, King Charles welcomed a team that officially does not exist. The Afghan women's cricket team, exiled by the Taliban regime's ban on women's sport, is no longer allowed to represent its country. Yet here they were, four years after most of them fled Afghanistan, playing exhibition matches while the women's T20 World Cup is hosted in England.
The King's greeting was warm. "I'm so glad that you can pursue what you want to do," he told the players, a symbolic show of support for a team stripped of its national status. He even joked: "If you lose, you can blame me for interrupting your training."
“King Charles meets exiled Afghan women's cricket team banned by Taliban from representing their country”
For the cricketers, the royal meeting was a chance to speak for those silenced back home. Ekil Latifi, who has not seen her family in Afghanistan for five years, said the team was representing "all the things that they can't do there." She left her country in 2021 at the age of 17, during the chaotic evacuations. Now a coach, she spoke of cricket as a lesson in resilience. "In life, you get one chance. In cricket, if you're a batter, you might just bat once," she said. Her dream is for the team to play as part of the official cricketing world, under their own national flag.
Latifi's teammate Shabnam Snahsan described the reality for women in Afghanistan: "They don't have the right to play cricket, even to go out, to study or anything." It is "so disappointing" that the team cannot take part in this summer's World Cup, she said, but meeting the King was a powerful gesture. "We're here to play cricket — but it's not just cricket, we're here to fight for them and this has meant a lot for us."
Most of the team are now refugees in Australia, their survival a testament to their resolve. But the question remains: will they ever again take the field under the Afghan flag?