Two groups of women are playing cricket matches in Melbourne on Thursday – with two very different dreams on the line. At the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Australia will go face to face with England with the home side chasing a 16-0 Ashes whitewash. Only a few miles up the road, at Junction Oval, an Afghanistan XI are playing a 20‑over match against a Cricket Without Borders Charity XI, their first match under the Afghanistan banner since the Taliban seized power in 2021 and they were forced to flee for their lives.
For the Afghan women, there is no Ashes trophy at stake: instead, they are playing for the chance to salvage something from the ashes of the dream of representing their country at cricket, a dream they feared they had left behind when they fled their home nation more than three years ago.
