Melbourne: The Four times world champions Australia will play its first ever match against Afghanistan in United Arab Emirates in August, ahead of series against Pakistan.
The aussies recognising Afghanistan’s increasing importance in world cricket will play one warm-up game against the emerging cricketing nation.
Cricket Australia (CA) chief executive officer James Sutherland said Australia had been actively looking for a chance to play Afghanistan for some time and found an opportunity once details of the imminent Pakistan-Australia series in the Middle East had started to become clear.
“Everyone in world cricket have been really impressed with how cricket has flourished in Afghanistan, despite its pressing national problems,” he said.
“As an ICC member, CA strongly supports world cricket’s ambition for cricket to continue to develop as a global sport and that, combined with the strong relationships between our two countries, encouraged us to look at how we might recognise and encourage Afghanistan by playing them on the field.”
“We also look forward to hosting Afghanistan in the ICC Under-19 World Cup in Australia in August.”
Sutherland said the details of the Afghanistan fixture had been finalised in off-line discussions at last week’s ICC Annual Conference in Kuala Lumpur.
ICC President Alan Isaac has also welcomed the news and said; “”This fixture supports ICC’s initiative to provide more opportunities for our top ranking Associate/Affiliate Member (AM) teams to play against better opposition. It aligns perfectly with the ICC Strategic Plan to build a bigger, better global game by developing more competitive teams at the highest level.”
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