Cricket vs Taliban
Timeri Murari, the author of “ The Taliban Cricket Club ”, tells Fiona Fernandez from Mid-Day that he was inspired to write the book after the Taliban decided to promote cricket in Afghanistan, when all other forms of entertainment was banned.
Carlyle Laurie
25-Feb-2013
Timeri Murari, the author of “The Taliban Cricket Club”, tells Fiona Fernandez from Mid-Day that he was inspired to write the book after the Taliban decided to promote cricket in Afghanistan, when all other forms of entertainment was banned.
In 2000, when I read that the Taliban regime was going to promote cricket, I thought it was totally surreal that a tyranny would introduce cricket into Afghanistan without any knowledge of a game that encourages and nurtures individuality, confidence, courage, defiance, within the democracy of cricket. The Taliban had banned every form of entertainment from music to movies, from clapping to chess. Then, out of the blue, the tyrannical regime announces cricket can be played. That Taliban announcement was the genesis of the idea, I played around with it, trying to figure the story.