We have understood quite well from the moment it happened that this is about paying Pakistan back for the Taliban's victory. That's the only thing that has changed. I agree with you that nothing will really change, regardless of what the PCB does or doesn't do, as long as Pakistan is seen as supportive of the Taliban, which it will continue to be, indefinitely. In that sense, this is beyond cricket, it is pure politics. But you make a mistaken comparison to apartheid, universally condemned, and the Taliban, who are not universally condemned, not even within Pakistan. The correct stance for cricketers is not to distance themselves from Pakistan's foreign policy, because this is nothing like apartheid, but for cricket to disengage from politics of any kind. Are you saying that individual Pakistani players should save their own careers by engaging in freelance politics with the Pakistani government as their antagonist? How is that even possible when I suspect that many of them probably wouldn't be against the Taliban's victory? Quite aside from the religious aspect, the Taliban's win is a major setback for the American empire (the way I see it, and the way other left analysts have seen it), so on that score alone it is not something unambiguous like apartheid, or slavery and Jim Crow in the U.S. But I agree, Pakistan is again isolated, and that is the only explanation for what has happened, and there does not seem to be a way out of this trap.
