{"id":9227,"date":"2025-01-11T06:41:53","date_gmt":"2025-01-11T06:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/heather-knight-icc-should-do-more-to-help-afghanistan-women\/"},"modified":"2025-01-11T06:41:53","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T06:41:53","slug":"heather-knight-icc-should-do-more-to-help-afghanistan-women","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/heather-knight-icc-should-do-more-to-help-afghanistan-women\/","title":{"rendered":"Heather Knight: ICC should do more to help Afghanistan women"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">England captain Heather Knight has called for the International Cricket Council to do more for the Afghanistan women&#8217;s team, whom she feels have been &#8220;forgotten&#8221;.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Female participation in sport in the country has effectively been outlawed since the Taliban&#8217;s return to power in 2021.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">More than 20 members of their women&#8217;s cricket team fled to safety in Australia and previously <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/cricket\/articles\/c07kez00k74o\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">asked the ICC<\/a> to allow them to play as a refugee team.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The issue has gained further attention in recent weeks as UK politicians have written to the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) calling for England&#8217;s men to refuse to play against Afghanistan in the Champions Trophy match in Lahore, Pakistan, on 26 February.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Knight said  the situation is &#8220;complex&#8221; but she hopes to meet some members of the Afghanistan side during the women&#8217;s Ashes series in Australia, as they are playing in an exhibition match against a Cricket Without Borders XI on 30 January in Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think it&#8217;s really good that it&#8217;s being talked about. Obviously, the situation in Afghanistan is heart-breaking,&#8221; Knight told BBC Sport before the opening game of the Ashes on Saturday (23:30 GMT).<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s a complex issue but I think as much as we can publicise the fact that the women&#8217;s team are playing out here, we should give those girls a voice because it&#8217;s a remarkable story that they&#8217;re actually here. They managed to get out of an extremely dire situation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I think those girls have been forgotten a lot. That is my honest opinion, which is a really sad thing. There hasn&#8217;t been a huge amount of leadership when it comes to Afghan women&#8217;s cricket team, so I&#8217;d love to see them have as much media as possible for that match.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/cricket\/articles\/ckgnj09d4e6o\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>England captain Heather Knight has called for the International Cricket Council to do more for the Afghanistan women&#8217;s team, whom she feels have been &#8220;forgotten&#8221;. Female participation in sport in the country has effectively been outlawed since the Taliban&#8217;s return to power in 2021. More than 20 members of their women&#8217;s cricket team fled to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9228,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9227"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9229,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9227\/revisions\/9229"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}