The ICC recently formed a Working Group to review the status of the ACB.
“There are cultural and religious reasons,” ICC chairman Greg Barclay said on Monday (November 22).
“It is a challenging situation. It was before August as well. All we can do is to continue monitoring the situation. Hopefully things will settle down, we’ll be able to see women’s cricket continue to grow. We accept it’s coming off a very low base, there’re cultural and religious reasons for that. There was slow but perceptible progress being made prior to August. We’d like to see that continue. We’re getting some messages that will be the case, that a commitment will be made to the women’s game. So let’s just wait and see.”
“Afghanistan is a member of the ICC. Our position was that we continue to help with the cricket programmes in the country, both men’s and women’s. We will continue to do that. Having said that, there are certain criteria any country needs to comply with to remain a member of the ICC. At present we haven’t seen any transgression, so we will continue to support them as a member and encourage them to continue to take an inclusive approach to cricket,” the ICC chairman said.
“I think it is really important that we ensure that women’s events have equal standing as men’s. We are desperate to ensure that,” Barclay said.
