From war zone to cricket pitch: The Afghan story in Adelaide

"You are Sam. You don't know me, but we all knew you."

Samandar Sediqi's voice still chokes up a little when he recalls this unexpected reunion in Adelaide from December last year. It happened while the players from both teams sat having lunch during the first-ever cricket match between the Australian Defence Force (ADF) Interpreters and the Australian Defence Force (ADF) Veterans in the suburb of Kilburn. The youngish-looking man who walked up to Sediqi had served in the same camp as the Afghan for 9 months in the southern provinces of Afghanistan.

"The veteran who recognised me had been a soldier in our camp. We interpreters only dealt with officers. My mentors used to call me Sam.So, he knew who I was and was so grateful for what I'd done," says Sediqi, as we catch up for tea at Agha Juice Centre, one of many Afghan food hangouts in the suburb of Prospect in northern Adelaide. Like with every reunion he's had since moving to Australia with those he served in the warzone with back in his motherland, this one too was highly emotional. This one was a bit more special for Sediqi though. Here he was, an Afghan by birth, far removed from his original home, after having spent 9.5 years of his life serving a foreign army with constant threats to his life, being the one acknowledged for his service by an Australian in Australia.

In a strange way, it also however gave him a unique link to his cricketing hero Rashid Khan for a moment. In terms of being an Afghan who's more recognizable than his Australian colleagues while being a part of an Australian camp. For, let's face it, when you hear the name Adelaide Strikers, the first name that pops to your head is Rashid Khan. This is of course not a slight on the likes of Alex Carey and Travis Head but more an ode to the impact that the best T20 spinner in the world has had on Adelaide, and more importantly the new identity he's given his compatriots who call this beautiful city their adopted home.

Like Mansoor Hashimi, who works for the state government and helps bring communities together, puts it, "When I moved here 15 years ago, every time I mentioned where I was from, they'd say 'oh dangerous place' or 'warzone'. Now they say, home of Rashid Khan. He's given us a new identity and one we are proud of."

And on Friday (November 4), around a thousand or so Adelaide-based Afghans will march up to the Adelaide Oval in their traditional garb to throw their support behind their original national team as they take on the Australians. But cricket will only be a part of it. As Hashimi and Sediqi say, being able to stand in front of 40,000, wave their national flag and sing their national anthem in a chorus will also be a statement they'll be sending to those in power currently in Afghanistan.

"The national flag on their uniforms, gives us hope. Cricket gives us hope. That the country we called home is still there and there is still hope for the future. We'll sing our anthem in the loudest voice possible, in front of 40,000 people at the Oval and millions around the world. That's when we will vent out all our anger against them and what they're doing to Afghanistan. We thought we'd lost our country. But this will prove that it still belongs to us," says one of them. To put this into context further, they reveal how under the current rulers in Afghanistan, the TV broadcast cuts out any image showing the flag and only starts once the Afghanistan team is done singing the original national anthem.

But they are naturally torn when it comes to who they'd want to throw their support behind at the Adelaide Oval, considering how important a game it is for Australia to progress to the next stage, and with Afghanistan already knocked out.

"It's like a civil war. We don't know who to support. I remember supporting Australia against Pakistan in the 1999 WC Final. I didn't want Pakistan to win. That's when our support started. For me, it'll be like Adelaide Strikers versus Australia," says Hashimi.

It will also be a case of Rashid Khan versus Australia on what is in many ways more his home ground than theirs. And it's almost unbelievable how deep his connections with Adelaide have grown in the years he's called this his cricketing home in Australia. Adelaide and South Australia are no strangers to Afghans after all. It's in this part of Australia that the Afghan cameleers set up base over 150 years ago as part of building the rail network connecting the southern and northern parts of Australia. And it's in Adelaide, where they built the first-ever mosque in Australia, which is also where Rashid goes for his Friday prayers whenever he's in town.

"What Rashid has done is rekindle that wonderful connection that Afghanistan and Adelaide have had for centuries. Even if most Afghans are not Australian citizens, when it comes to Adelaide Strikers, they call it 'my team'. He's giving a new identity for us. When we see his pictures on buses or trams. We feel even more like we are home," says Hashimi.

In fact, the match between the former interpreters and veterans was a concept that was borne out of a shared love for Rashid Khan and cricket, and one encouraged by Rashid Khan himself. The ace spinner, who has his favourite food haunts in Prospect, had been a chief guest at an event organised by the Afghan Cricket Club, which was founded by Hashimi in a bid to unite the various Afghan ethnic groups living in Adelaide, in 2019. It was around the time the 40 families of former ADF interpreters were looking to strengthen their connections with the many veterans who had served alongside them during the war in Afghanistan.

"We realised that Rashid Khan was a shared love. And cricket was a shared passion. So we decided the best way forward would be to start playing an annual match, which has been a great initiative, and Rashid is very appreciative of the idea too and plans to be there this year on December 11," says Sediqi.

"The match is also a chance to pay respect to each other. We know what we've been through. There's still a lot of us dealing with PTSD from having been on the warfront. In fact, one of the veterans served as a psychologist and he says that just being able to share these experiences through a sporting competition is good for us physically but also mentally."

When it came to deciding upon the colour of their uniform though, it was a very straightforward decision, like it always has been with every Afghan-representative team in Adelaide. They wanted it to be blue, not the Afghan blue, but the Adelaide Strikers blue.

"We have over 10 teams now in Adelaide. They're all called Strikers. Afghan Strikers or Northern Strikers, you name it. They all wear the Strikers blue. They all want to be like Rashid Khan on the field. So, the ADF interpreters didn't need a lengthy discussion to decide upon our jersey colour either," says Sediqi with a chuckle.

Sediqi moved to Australia in 2016 after having served the ADF as an interpreter for nearly a decade, both in the southern provinces and near Kabul. He's one of the key members of the interpreters cricket team, but gets made fun of for having a bowling action similar to Lasith Malinga and not Rashid Khan. He also can't field on the boundary because he can't generate much power with his throw. It's not a cricketing injury that prevents him from doing so though. It's in fact the long-lasting impact of a kidnapping incident where he almost lost his life. An episode that further accentuates the life-and-death scenarios that he dealt with for the sake of keeping the Australian defence forces safe.

"I used to work for 5-6 months straight and get 9 days off to spend with my family. It happened straight away as I left the camp, right outside the gate. They had been targeting me. There was a car with 3 people already in it. They grabbed me and drove for 5-10 minutes, they pulled out their knives, one held it to my neck, the guy in front had a pistol. When they left the main road, they went to quiet streets. Took my mobile phones from the front pocket," he recalls while showing the scars on his fingers from where he held the knife to push it away from his throat.

"I managed to open the door on the right hand side, kept it open with my right leg. They beat me a lot. They wanted to keep my feet away from the ground. I somehow tried to jump out and fall on my shoulder and as they turned left, I escaped. The internal injury to my right shoulder has never healed."

It was this near fatal event that convinced Sediqi, who otherwise wasn't keen on leaving his homeland, to shift base to Adelaide. It didn't take him too long to settle in though.

"I was Australian before I came here. Interpreters were Australians before they came here. They dedicated a lot, much more than even many Australians who live here. We were combat interpreters on patrol. Every day, 5 days a week, we faced combat. Threat of life. Most days, we had causalities. 20 times a month," he says.

When he wasn't on patrol though, Sediqi would get together with the others in the camp to watch cricket in TV, whether it was while Afghanistan were playing or when the Aussies were watching their team. He does remember playing a couple of cricket matches alongside the Aussie defence forces too alongside learning to play Aussie rules football. So, when he did eventually move to Adelaide, he felt like he'd always belonged here.

Hashimi, meanwhile, has seen the attitude towards Afghans change over the years. But there was a time he felt rather irked by the fact that the Afghan teams in the city were based on ethnicities and that they would be rather confrontational while playing against each other.

"When the Hazara team would play against a team representing India or Pakistan, it was always friendly. But as soon as they were up against Pashtuns or the Tajiks, there was more aggression. I wanted to end that and formed the Afghan Cricket Club some 6 years ago. And we have been unbeaten ever since," he says. He also reveals how while the Hazaras in Afghanistan never play cricket and stick to soccer, most of those who play cricket in Adelaide belong to the Hazara community.

Though they are proud members of the Adelaide community, not just as Afghans but as South Australians, both Hashimi and Sediqi are very aware of how they constantly have eyes on them on social media from those in power back home. And how some of them still remain very wary of what they put out on social media.

"We still have family back home and we are concerned about them. Back there, I had stopped attending family functions because my identity had been exposed, even though I'm proud of everything I did for my country as an interpreter. Even now some interpreters don't want to come in front of the camera because our cricket jersey carries a badge representing the ADF interpreters. When I post stuff about the match, friend requests come through immediately from people connected with those in control there now. To keep an eye on me," says Sediqi.

And that's exactly why the game at the Adelaide Oval on Friday isn't only significant because it'll be the first time that they get to see Rashid Khan versus Australia at a venue where his name gets chanted as often as any of the Aussies. But like Hashimi puts it, this is also another opportunity for Afghans to unite and send a strong message to the world.

That, "We are still here and that we are not going to surrender."