Bad Start - but swings and round abouts

Well it was a bad start to my journey - with me remembering everything except my credit card and ATM card. Then having my money belt stolen from a bag I left unattended. As Johnny Diesel and the Injectors once sang.."don't ya know it's a cryin' shame, when you got yourself to blame...." But thanks to my industrious girlfriend and the fact that my main man is following in my footsteps by 24 hours with my cards - no real harm done - apart from being lighter a hundred bucks, but I will now have to be a hell of a lot more careful (....what in Afghanistan? )


More interestingly I have made contact with a number of members of the ICC Development Team. The ICC Cricket development head office is in Dubai. So I spoke with Matthew Kennedy the Global Development dude and an expat Aussie - he tells me that 96 nations now have their national cricket associations registered with the ICC.

Iqbal Sikander - a former Pakastani international - is the Asian Cricket Council's development officer and has been helping to grow the game in Afghanistan since they joined the ACC in 2003. And it seems things have never been better for the game in Afghanistan - despite the dreadful security situation in the country. After the fall of the Taliban refugees stared flooding back into Afghanistan bring the game of cricket which they had learned in the refugee camps in Pakistan with them. Cricket being the second religon of Pakistan (which Aussie Umpire Darryl Hair recently found out....)

The Afghan national team recently played in the ACC trophy in Malaysia and did very well - being narrowly knocked out in the Semi-finals by Hong Kong in a rain affected match. http://www.acctrophy2006.com/index.htm They now have to beat Nepal in the third place play-off to advance to the group of nations vying for the the small amounts of spots available to non-test nations at the next World Cup. Though I'm told that the Nepali team are no pushovers aand are themselves a little disapointed not to be in the finals.

In addition to this 4 Afghan players have been invited to stay and play with the MCC in London following their tour of England in July this year.

I hope to meet some of the players when they return to Kabul next week.


My next step when I get to Kabul is to find a junior cricket team or school to give my Kanga Cricket set to and also to find contacts who we can organise to send second hand cricket equipment to as Kingsgrove Cricket (manufacturers of Cricket Equipment for clubs and schools) takes donations of second hand eqipment and is happy to send it on to developing countries - though I will still have to find some money to send it over.