Loving the Afghan cricket team…

Posted by Lianne Gutcher at 13:58 on 13 Jun 2010

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A little while ago, my friend Leslie Knott (pictured above with the team) and her friend Tim Albone decided to make a documentary.
 
The Afghan cricket team, which had formed in the refugee camps of Pakistan, was setting out to qualify for the Cricket World Cup in 2011 and they decided it would be quite fun to follow them in their qualifying bid, which they reckoned would be over fairly sharpish.
 
None of them guessed – Leslie and Tim were joined by a third friend Lucy Martens (all first time filmmakers) – that the Afghan cricket team would do so phenomenally well and keep  winning and the project would take up the best part of the next three years. But the rise of the Afghan cricket team has been a fairytale story, the film Out of the Ashes is great – Sam Mendes thinks so too and came on as executive producer this March – and it’s premiering at the Edinburgh International Film Festival on Thursday.
 
Oh, dear. I’m gushing. I'll stop.

The film starts out with footage of the team playing in the dust and rubble in shalwar kameez in Pakistan. Then the location moves to Kabul where the players are unable to use the bowling machine because the city has no power. The film follows the team as they win in Jersey, Tanzania and Argentina, and then make it to South Africa where they get knocked out but return to Afghanistan as national heroes.
 
What is interesting, speaking to Leslie and Lucy, is how their success as filmmakers became so entwined with that of the success of the team.
 
As Leslie said: “Every time they would win, we were like, ‘this is great but f^ck!’” as it meant they would have to keep going and keep scrabbling around for money. They got their air tickets to Tanzania two days before the match after a funding windfall and, desperate to get to Argentina, Leslie had eight minutes to convince a banker in London why he should back the trip. He wrote a check on the spot for GBP 8,000, saying “I just feel like this project really needs to happen.”

Lucy, left, and Leslie in Argentina

I also love Leslie and Lucy's story about how their relationship with the team developed from initial awkwardness – they were the first women many of the Pashtu team had had contact with apart from their mothers, wives or sisters – to close friendship.
 
As Lucy said about first meeting the team: “They were talking behind our backs and one member of the team came over and said, ‘they are saying bad things and making jokes about you’ but fast forward two years, it’s so relaxed and we are just like sisters.”
 
Though whenever the team won, there could never be any celebratory hugs because that kind of physical contact just still wouldn’t do.   
 
And as the girls’ fondness for the team grew, so did the cricketers for them: they essentially became the team’s biggest fans because they were the only people at every single match.
 
Even if you don't know anything about cricket, you still get caught up in the characters and the drama. Neither Leslie nor Lucy gave a toss about cricket when they started out.
 
Lucy admitted that in Jersey she had “no clue and I wasn’t interested at all. Tim told me to put the camera on the wicket and let it stay there and I kind of followed the balls. In Tanzania, I still had no clue. At one point I was sitting at the side of the pitch and said, ‘God, this is so boring’ and Tim was like, ‘F^cking just learn the rules.’ And so I did and I got really into it. But also if you love a team it’s much more fun.”  
There were times Lucy says she could barely film because she was jumping up and down or in tears.  
 
It is likely that the team got a telling off for “storming the pitch, falling to their knees and praying, and sobbing into the grass” and generally not behaving like cricketing gentlemen after their first big win in Jersey but it that is one of Leslie’s favourite moments during the two-plus years.
 
“When they won against Jersey there was so much tension. If they hadn’t won they wouldn’t be able to continue and when they did win there was this raw abandon. I’ve never seen that kind of unbridled emotion before. It was amazing to see it and it never felt like that again.”
 
In Tanzania, when the team wins – and you see this in the film – the captain goes over and hisses to the team, “Don’t you run. Sit down. Behave.”
 
The cricket team have not only become national heroes – “they used to think of us as refugee camp gangsters,” one player tells the camera – they have become ambassadors for Afghanistan.
 
Leslie: “It was interesting too to be in South Africa, to be outside of Afghanistan, and see how people interact with Afghans. They have such a negative view. I remember once I was in the hotel in South Africa and the woman who was travelling with the Namibian team she said to me: ‘Are you with the Afghan team? You know, I have to tell you, I am so impressed by them. I was expecting them to be vulgar warriors really, barbarians, but I couldn’t believe how kind they were, how they have such good manners and how they were really taking pride in the fact they were ambassadors for their country.’ And I thought it was so good the way the team has been able to change at least a couple of people’s minds about what Afghanistan is.”
 
I have absolutely no doubt the film will be able to change the minds of a few more people too. If you are in Edinburgh, go see the film on Thursday.

 Below: Lucy filming

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