Cricsheet

Today I’ve updated the site to remove all matches featuring the Afghanistani men’s team, as well as matches from the Afghanistani Premier League. I’ve thought about this for a while, and have finally decided that I need to do it. I don’t feel comfortable continuing to publish matches involving, or played in, Afghanistan while the Afghan women’s players are simply being ignored by the ICC and most of the full members (Cricket Australia being the notable exception). I’ve felt this way for a while, but the recent publication of the Women’s Future Tours for the next 5 years without even a passing mention of Afghanistan, along with the cricket media (again with a few honourable exceptions) not even mentioning Afghanistan in their reporting of the FTP, has finally persuaded me to remove Afghanistan from the site. The ICC continuing to ignore that Afghanistan is in breach of the Full Member requirements by not having a women’s team is also an irritation, along with the empty platitudes they spout every time they’re forced to comment.

The result of my decision to withhold matches, as I write this, is that 329 matches that were previously available within the downloadable data are now gone. These matches will hopefully be restored at some point, but only when I feel comfortable doing so. I don’t expect my small decision to make a difference to the ICC, but I’ve decided that that doesn’t necessarily matter. I’ve made the decision to do what little I can do with this site to protest the situation. Some people may disagree with this decision. I don’t particularly care. There are bigger issues at stake, and if my doing this one small thing can cause people to seriously think about the issue then it is worth much more to me than providing any match data could be. I’ve taken longer than I should have to come to this point, and others have called for action sooner, and more eloquently than I, but I’ve finally got there.