Fourteen Names in the Draft, One Empty Chair, and the ICC's Silence

My field notebook has an old habit to it — whenever a list reaches my hands, I first count the numbers, then I go looking for the people behind them. I look for those who never make it onto the scoreboard. Last month, when the Afghanistan Premier League (APL) draft list landed on my desk, I counted fourteen first. Fourteen English cricketers who had put their names down for a league owned by the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB), and led by a Taliban-appointed chairman. Within days, three of those fourteen stepped back. The names were struck off the list, but the question was not.

Watching that list from a room in Dhaka, I remembered 2026 — the first time I sat in a press box as the only woman, when a veteran journalist told me to let the men handle the tactics. That night I took forty pages of notes. Because I knew that what people do not say out loud is what proves most useful later. The APL draft works the same way — the most important sentence is not written on the list.

The APL is not new. It ran a single season in 2026 and then went dark. This year the ACB has revived it, but not in Kabul — in the United Arab Emirates. In the league's own words, one day it will be played in Kabul; for now, its base stays in a Gulf venue. That decision is the first signal. When a country's domestic league cannot be held in its own country, at least one reason lies behind it — security, infrastructure, or international acceptability. Commercially, a neutral venue means a cleaner presentation; politically, it is a form of self-protection.

The APL is a T20 franchise league, which means its core product is not on-field competition but stars, sponsors, and host-nation branding. The league's commercial foundation is weak precisely here. It stopped after its first season; that history alone raises the question of a sustainable business model. To stand it up again, there is no substitute for the presence of overseas stars. And the largest group among those overseas stars is England's — fourteen players. Their presence gives the league the language of international recognition.

The identity of the ACB cannot be skipped over here. It is the Taliban administration in power in Afghanistan that determined the ACB's leadership. Afghanistan's men's team keeps playing without sanctions, while women's and girls' cricket is banned in the country. Many of those who wanted to play were forced to leave; some fled for their safety. This asymmetry sits at the centre of today's debate — and it is the fact that never appears on any scorecard.

I have followed Afghanistan's age-group cricket for some years. My notebook holds several names from Afghanistan's Under-19 side — players who rose from grounds in Kabul, Khost, or Jalalabad. But one whole column of that notebook is blank — the women's column. A population whose right to play has been erased will never appear in any scout's notes. That loss will run for a generation.

The economics of the draft and the ethics of the draft are two different things, but in the APL they have blurred into one. The best-known name among the fourteen English players who signed is Moeen Ali. If we look at a cricketer's decision only through the lens of morality, we lose his professional reality. Moeen's career is now in its late phase; over the past twelve months he has played in the Caribbean Premier League, the Pakistan Super League, The Hundred, the Lanka Premier League, ILT20, and the Bangladesh Premier League. Six leagues in one year. To a freelance cricketer this is now the normal life cycle — and that very cycle tells us how ordinary a new league's invitation is to him.

His earnings are a matter of record. He took 150,000 pounds from the PSL, 100,000 pounds from The Hundred, and his APL deal is cited at nearly 80,000 pounds. For a freelancer in the late phase of a career, 80,000 pounds is not nothing — but the real question is this: is the league buying only his cricket, or is it also buying his name?

That is the APL's real business model. When a new league cannot attract buyers with the quality of its cricket, it trades instead on the presence of its stars. Overseas names mean viewers, sponsors, and journalists' attention. But this presence has a second side that the scoreboard never shows — the presence of overseas stars gives the league legitimacy. By using the names of foreign players, an organisation tied to a contested regime can present itself as normal, functional, and internationally acceptable. Here two kinds of value separate — to the player the league's value is financial; to the league the player's value is legitimacy-creating.

This is where the ECB's role comes under question. The England and Wales Cricket Board has said it will issue NOCs (no-objection certificates) to the players. ECB director of cricket Rob Key's explanation was simple: legally, it is hard to stop players. But an NOC is not an instruction — that argument shifts responsibility from the institution onto the individual. The decision the board does not want to make itself, it tells the player to make alone.

There is a further inconsistency. The ECB will not play a bilateral series against Afghanistan, yet it faces them at World Cups, and it also permits its players to appear in the APL. Refusing a bilateral series costs the ECB nothing; but withholding NOCs would cut off players' income, and that is uncomfortable for the ECB. When the cost of principle is zero, principle is easy; when the cost rises, principle wavers.

The persecution of women under Taliban rule in Afghanistan has been described by a UN official as an unprecedented assault. The International Cricket Council (ICC) keeps Afghanistan's full membership intact, even though the country's women's cricket has effectively been erased. A structural question hides here: is ICC membership granted purely on on-field performance, or should it carry some minimum policy condition?

There is precedent in history for a sports boycott against South Africa's apartheid regime. That comparison has been raised in the APL debate, but it is weak as a legal precedent; it works better as the opening of a moral debate — because Afghanistan's men's team is not being used as an instrument the way apartheid's was. The most important dimension of this debate is this — the question is not against Afghan cricketers; it is against Afghanistan's cricket administration, and against the process of granting that administration international recognition.

The most durable damage, though, is not on the field but in the pipeline. The shutting down of Afghan women's cricket means half of a generation's talent is lost. However well the men's game does, a country's cricket is complete only when both halves of its people have the chance to play. That damage does not show on today's scoreboard, but it will show in ten years.

The opacity around the league's money and where it goes points to a larger question. If the APL truly wanted to strengthen Afghan grassroots cricket, it could not speak of that goal while excluding women's cricket. Yet women's cricket does not exist at all in the league's promotion. In other words, half of the word grassroots, repeated so often, is invisible in this league.

For sponsors the calculation is hard too. Signing on to a contested league means taking on brand risk in exchange for commercial profit. In the international market these days, brand reputation is no small matter. So the APL's real challenge is not hiring players — its bigger challenge is holding on to its own reputation.

In South Asia's cricket family, Afghanistan is now a permanent member — a regular in the Asia Cup and in World Cup qualifiers. So this debate is not only Kabul's or Dubai's; it is a question of the whole region's cricket policy. When Bangladesh or India plays a series against Afghanistan, the administration behind that series faces the same question.

There is a counter-intuitive truth here. It is generally assumed that players go to the APL for the money. But three of the fourteen who entered the draft stepped back under visible public pressure. In other words, their decision was reputation-elastic, not merely a matter of money. That is a big signal for the league: if the presence of overseas stars is its main tool for gaining legitimacy, then when those stars withdraw under pressure, the league's greatest asset erodes. Three out of fourteen — roughly a fifth — that number alone tells us how fragile hiring overseas players may be in future.

There is another thing we easily skip past. There is no clear information about where APL's revenue goes. Some say it will go to grassroots cricket (excluding girls); others say to the government or to politically connected owners. This opacity is the real danger. A league that cannot clearly state where its money goes leaves its moral claim unclear too.

And we must consider the players' own risk. Six leagues in one year means sustained strain on the body, and with it injury risk. Often a week-to-week assessment means the injury is nowhere near healed — we see this repeatedly with players. Add political reputational risk on top, and a player will be seen buying certain reputational trouble for uncertain financial return.

Whether the APL goes ahead is now the biggest question. If the league runs, the debate will persist; if it collapses, the discussion will cool quickly. But one thing will remain — when cricket's administration stays silent, every NOC, every draft name, and every contract becomes a moral position in itself.

Whether anyone will sit in the empty chair kept today for women's cricket depends on decisions off the field, not on the scoreboard within it. And will that blank column in my notebook ever be filled? That is the same question's answer.