The
Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) and the Emirates Cricket Board (ECB) have entered into a five-year mutual cooperation agreement wherein the Taliban-ruled hardline country’s national team will play their home games in the UAE.
A corollary of the agreement is that Afghanistan will also play a series of three T20I matches each year with UAE national team. In return, ECB will provide logistic support to the Afghanistan board, including visa assistance and office space.
The Afghanistan team has already been playing and training in the UAE, but on a series-by-series basis.
ECB general secretary Mubashshir Usmani said: “Both the Emirates and Afghanistan cricket boards enjoy long, cordial relations, and we are happy to support the ACB in ensuring that they have a home for their cricket. We are also thankful to Afghanistan Cricket Board for agreeing to play T20 internationals against UAE Team each year. This will provide our UAE team with the invaluable exposure and help in their development.”
Strife-torn Afghanistan has remained a no-go zone for international teams. The situation escalated with the Taliban takeover in August 2021. ESPNcricinfo reports that several ACB staff were among those who fled the country in the immediate aftermath, and thereafter getting visas for players based in Afghanistan to play abroad became a bigger challenge. The board subsequently arranged UAE residency visas for about two dozen players.
As per the ICC’s Future Tours Programme (FTP), Afghanistan are set to host Australia, Pakistan and West Indies in three ODIs each, as well as Zimbabwe across formats, in the next year leading into the 2023 ODI World Cup. In the UAE, these can be spread across venues in Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah.
For the record, in 2015 the ACB signed an agreement with the BCCI to move base to Greater Noida, on the outskirts of Delhi.
