By Staff Reporter
LAHORE: Zimbabwe has agreed to join a T20I cricket tri-series in Pakistan alongside Sri Lanka, stepping in after Afghanistan pulled out over the deaths of three of its cricketers in an airstrike blamed on Islamabad, officials said Saturday.
Zimbabwe Cricket accepted the Pakistan Cricket Board’s (PCB) invitation to participate in the maiden tri-series on Pakistani soil, scheduled from November 17 to 29 as preparation for next year’s ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, the PCB said in a statement. “Zimbabwe Cricket has accepted the Pakistan Cricket Board’s invitation to participate in a T20I tri-series also featuring Sri Lanka.”
The announcement came a day after the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) withdrew from the series, citing the killing of three players in an strike on Friday in Afghanistan’s Paktika province. In a post on social media platform X late Friday, the ACB said the players, identified as Kabeer, Sibghatullah and Haroon, and “five other countrymen” from Urgun district were killed, with seven others injured.
It said the players had travelled to Sharana to participate in a friendly cricket match before returning home. “The ACB considers this a great loss for Afghanistan’s sports community, its athletes, and the cricketing family,” the board said, announcing its decision to withdraw from the November fixtures.
Afghanistan’s star spinner Rashid Khan welcomed the move in a post on X, saying he supported the ACB’s withdrawal from the upcoming series against Pakistan. The International Cricket Council (ICC) issued a statement Saturday night expressing shock over the incident. The ICC said it was “deeply saddened and appalled” by the deaths in the airstrike, which also claimed several civilian lives. “The three young men had returned home after participating in a friendly cricket match when they were killed in an attack that also claimed the lives of several civilians,” the governing body said. “The ICC strongly condemns this act of violence that has robbed families, communities, and the cricketing world of three bright talents whose only ambition was to play the sport they loved,” it added
Pakistan has denied targeting civilians in the strikes, which targeted hideouts of the outlawed Hafiz Gul Bahadur group in the Angoor Adda region and across Afghanistan’s Urgun and Barmal districts of Paktika province. The attacks followed a gun-and-bomb assault on a military installation in North Waziristan, and came hours after Islamabad and Kabul extended a two-day ceasefire.
Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said earlier Saturday that Pakistan had carried out precision strikes against the group. “All speculations and assertions being made regarding targeting of civilians are false and meant to generate support for terrorist groups operating from inside Afghanistan,” he said on X.
Cricket icon Shahid Afridi weighed in on the tensions, accusing Afghanistan of forgetting Pakistan’s past support. “Afghanistan, in its acts of aggression, had forgotten Pakistan’s hospitality and ‘favours’,” the former all-rounder wrote on X. “Pakistan has always stood by its Afghan brothers, considering the troubles of Afghans as its own trouble,” he said. “It opened its borders for its brothers. It accommodated 4 million refugees on its land. I have to say that in recent days, Afghanistan, forgetting all these favours, committed open aggression on the borders, to which our forces gave a full response,” Afridi added.
The cricket fallout comes amid escalating border clashes between the neighbours. Pakistan has seen a surge in terrorist attacks, particularly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces, targeting police, law enforcement and security forces, since the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ended a ceasefire with the government in 2022. Islamabad has repeatedly raised concerns over TTP militants operating from Afghanistan and urged Kabul to act, but Afghan authorities have denied supporting militancy, offering assurances that have not materialised or advising Pakistan to negotiate with the group.Tensions spiked last week with border skirmishes on October 11, in which the Pakistani military said 23 troops were martyred and 200 Taliban and affiliated terrorists killed following an attack from the Afghan side.
Copyright © 2021 Independent Pakistan | All rights reserved
