It was the “unveiling” video that triggered the nausea. Hashmatullah Shahidi and Tim Southee, the Test captains of Afghanistan and New Zealand, stood either side of a trophy contested last week by their two nations in a one-off match in India, theatrically revealing the ornate bauble by drawing back a long, black veil. Nobody, it seemed, had paused to consider the symbolism. For just a fortnight before this frivolous photo op, the Taliban had strengthened its “vice and virtue” laws to compel all Afghan women to veil their entire bodies, including their faces, simply to step outside.

New Zealand’s captain Tim Southee (L) and his Afghanistan’s counterpart Hashmatullah Shahidi unveil the trophy on the eve of their one-off Test cricket match.Credit: AFP

The visual of the trophy presentation was not merely provocative, but obscene.

In the end, the match never took place, with days of rain in Greater Noida ensuring a washout without a ball being bowled. But the far graver issue, which cricket has barely begun to confront, is why it was ever contemplated at all.

This is the sport that tried, however imperfectly, to isolate apartheid South Africa by suspending its team from international cricket for 21 years. Today, another barbarous segregation is being perpetrated by a Test nation, with Afghanistan’s fanatical rulers attempting to erase women from public life, issuing mandates that they must not sing, or laugh, or raise their voices, or even read aloud. And yet this time, the broader context is airbrushed, to the extent that the Afghanistan Cricket Board can perform its crass unveiling stunt without a........

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