Sports
The Afghanistan national football team has been competing in international football since 1941 and currently has a world ranking of 179. The national team plays its home games at the Ghazi Stadium in Kabul, while football in Afghanistan is governed by the Afghanistan Football Federation. The national team has never competed or qualified for the World Cup. The country also has a national team in the sport of futsal, a 5-a-side variation of football. Some of the other popular sports in Afghanistan include cricket, volleyball, basketball, taekwondo, boxing, wrestling, weightlifting, and bodybuilding.
Cricket, which is a newly introduced sport in Afghanistan fuelled by the success of the Afghan national cricket team is growing in popularity. It has risen from the lower levels of international cricket to qualifying for the 2010 Twenty20 World Cup. More recently the under-19 team has qualified for the 2012 ICC Under-19 Cricket World Cup. The Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) is the official governing body of the sport and is headquartered in Kabul. The Ghazi Amanullah Khan International Cricket Stadium serves as the nation's main cricket stadium, followed by the Kabul National Cricket Stadium. Several other stadiums are under construction. Cricket is played between teams from different provinces, mostly by the Pashtuns on both sides of the Durand Line.
Buzkashi is a traditional sport, mainly among the northern Afghans. It is similar to polo, played by horsemen in two teams, each trying to grab and hold a goat carcass. Afghan Hounds (a type of running dog) originated in Afghanistan and was originally used in the sport of hunting.
Read more about this topic: Afghanistan, Culture
Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“Come, my Celia, let us prove
While we may the sports of love;
Time will not be ours forever,
He at length our good will sever.”
—Ben Jonson (1572–1637)
“Falling in love is the right adventure for those who dislike sports and travel.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)