This possibility forms the underlying premise of Timeri Murari's novel The Taliban Cricket Club, allowing him to juxtapose the ideals of fairness and civility that underpin the game with the brutality and oppression of the regime.
The narrator, Rukshana, is a journalist who has been forced to file her articles detailing the abuses of the Taliban and the restrictions suffered by women under the strict Sharia laws under a pseudonym in foreign papers. When Zorak Wahidi, the Minister for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, shows an interest in her, she initially fears her illicit activities have been discovered.
The truth is, however, worse than anything she could have imagined; he means not to punish but to marry her, a more certain end to what little freedom she retains than any prison cell. Rukshana immediately begins to plan her escape, but is terrified by the prospect of leaving her younger brother Jahan to face the consequences of her actions.
The announcement that there is to be a cricket tournament in Kabul, with the winning team to travel to Pakistan for further training seems like the prefect opportunity to enable him to flee the country too.
He and his cousins form a team, although none of them knows the first thing about the game, while Rukshana, who played for her university team in her student days in Delhi, acts as their coach.
Not only does her involvement place them all in danger, it forces her to relive painful memories of happier days and the man she left behind in India.
A tale of love, daring and cricket, the overall tone of the story is relatively light and touched with humour, but does not shy away from the violence and hardship that characterised life under the Taliban.
Murari, who travelled to Afghanistan as part of his research for this book, brings the experiences of those who lived in Kabul in the late 1990s to his writing, and The Taliban Cricket Club will, I hope, reach a readership put off by more confronting novels such as The Swallows of Kabul.
• Dr McKinney is a Dunedin scientist.
