Refugee to role model for Afghan skipper

He is the rugged face of Afghan cricket with a story fit for the big screen, and he embodies not only his nation's turbulent past, but its hopes for a brighter future.

When Nawroz Mangal led Afghanistan against Pakistan last week, it was the end of a long journey which started with his family's flight from Soviet troops, and continued when he picked up bat and ball as a young refugee.

According to Mangal, now 27, the enduring legacy from those tough days in hard-scrabble Pakistani border camps is a love of cricket which has now blossomed into a successful international career.

“That period was difficult for all the family,” the Afghan captain told AFP in an interview. “We were financially hit and living in refugee camps was very tough on us.

“The best part of those ugly days was that I learnt this beautiful game of cricket.” It was “this beautiful game” which pitted Mangal's Afghanistan against Pakistan for their first top-level one-day international in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, with the debutants losing by seven wickets.

Regardless of the result, it was a landmark event greeted with high excitement in the war-wrecked nation -- even by members of the Taliban -- which has taken cricket to its hearts.

Mangal is the figurehead for Afghanistan's cricket revolution as the most recognisable player of a squad which learned the game on rudimentary pitches in the Pakistani camps.

But he says the biggest obstacle to his cricket career was his father, who wanted him to follow his two brothers by becoming a doctor and looking after the injured soldiers and civilians in his war-ravaged homeland.

It took skilful persuasion from coach Taj Malik -- one of the pioneers of cricket in Afghanistan -- who travelled to the border camp to convince Mangal's father of his son's talent.

Mangal calls those early days “hard to forget”.

But once the Taliban were overthrown by US-led troops in 2001, Mangal and his family returned home and the Afghanistan cricket team was founded. He was then selected for the Asian Cricket Council Trophy in Oman in 2004.

AFP