Afghanistan's unloved cricketers

The young Afghan cricket team may have achieved major victories, but their countrymen still distrust them, writes Reza Mohammadi in the Guardian.

If you tried to get inside Afghan society, you'd discover some interesting reasons for this lack of enthusiasm. The first is that the players are not only all Pashtun but also come from the east of the country. In Afghanistan's tribal society, the team's success was interpreted as a sign of Pashtuns' special privileges in the social and political spheres. Afghans, who tend to perceive everything through racial and tribal filters, do not regard a team whose members belong to a single ethnicity as a team representing the nation.