New Delhi: They make their sabz chai – a special green tea – in their hotel room. Pull out the famous Afghan dry fruits from their backpacks. Sit on the floor to eat on their shared dastarkhwans. Knock on each others doors if someone hasn’t turned up for breakfast. This is what home looks like for Afghanistan’s cricketers now.
Scattered across continents, training in UAE, plying their trades in franchise leagues around the world, the Afghan cricketers carry a rich and unique culture in habits that they can fit inside suitcases.
They may not have a home ground. And they may have never played an international game in their own backyard but they have each other.
History and politics have made that nearly impossible. Decades of conflict have turned Afghan life into a sort of moving caravan across borders. And yet, their culture never leaves.
Gulbadin Naib comes from the Kuchi tribe – essentially, Pashtun nomadic, pastoralist folks who traditionally migrated between summer pastures in central and northern Afghanistan and warmer, southern winter pastures.
Growing up as a refugee in Pakistan, he knew movement defined his life long before cricket arrived for him.
“The most important thing is our language and our culture,” he told HT. “We don’t want to change that. But it’s very difficult, because when you go to a new place, everything changes.”
“As a refugee, you are always an outsider,” he said. “The ID cards. Paying rent. No one really accepts you completely.”
But he also learnt early that Afghans survive through community. Wherever Afghans settle around the world, Naib notices a similar pattern and that instinct carries into the Afghan cricket team.
“The most beautiful place in an Afghan house is always the guest room,” he explained. “Our culture is that when we build a house, we first ask where the mosque is. Then we make the guest room before our own bedrooms.”
On tour, this reflects into prayer circles in hotel rooms, shared breakfasts. After a big win or tough loss, nobody eats alone.
“We pray together. We eat together. The whole team sits together,” Naib said of their brotherhood and humility. “Even if a youngster scores a century, he will still serve water for others… simply out of respect for the seniors. This is what we learned at home.”
But away from home, their cuisine is a bridge to their culture. They miss Afghan home cooked food more than anything and so they are now known for ordering massive spreads for their non Afghan team-mates in the Indian Premier League from restaurants run by Afghan immigrants in cities they travel to. Rashid Khan would frequent Mazaar – a famous Afghan restaurant in Lajpat Nagar in South Delhi – when he wasn’t as recognised and the protocols weren’t as stringent.
“We want to introduce our culture to everyone who cares. If you come to our house for tea, we put food for ten people,” he says. “That’s our culture.”
If debate arises even within the team, they resolve it the Afghan way. Modeled on the jirga system – a traditional assembly of Pashtun elders that resolves disputes through consensus. Once resolved by the seniors, everyone eats together. The daawat – or feast – is their way of celebrating resolution.
That same instinct has surfaced now as the team made time to visit former Afghan pacer Shapoor Zadran, who is currently receiving treatment for an illness in Greater Noida.
“When someone is not well, we don’t ask questions, we just go,” Naib said.
Their traditional folk dance Attan appears mostly at weddings but even after rare, emotional victories on the field. When they upset England in Delhi in 2023, the Attan was performed behind closed doors.
There are rare wins but also defeats that haunt. Their loss to Australia at the 2023 World Cup stayed in his mind until they finally beat them in the T20 World Cup in 2024. But processing the heartbreak after Glenn Maxwell’s heroics in Mumbai became slightly easy when they dealt with it together.
“That night we all gathered in the manager’s room. We called all the players up, had a good dinner, and just talked positively, supporting each other,” said Rashid.
They did something similar after the heartbreak last week, when they had to process the painful loss to South Africa in the double Super Over in Ahmedabad. They ordered ITC’s Peshawari, Dal Bukhara and Dal Makhani and talked their emotions out.
“We have people around the team who give us the best company,” he said. “Wherever we go, we get so much love that we don’t really feel like we’re not at home.”
“You do miss your home. You want your own crowd, people cheering for you. Unfortunately, we don’t have that opportunity,” Rashid said. “But everywhere we go, we find some support… the first game we played in Chennai, we felt like we were playing in Afghanistan.”
They may be athletes whose training base has changed over the years and representatives of a country they can’t host from. They don’t know whether they will be able to anytime soon. And until then, their culture will travel alongside. They move constantly – UAE, Dehradun, Lucknow, Greater Noida – but they take Afghanistan along wherever they go.
