Democracy in action.

We in Britain are sometime not sufficiently appreciative of the benefits of democracy we have an unfortunately a 'jaundice' view of politicians - for obvious reasons referred to yesterday. Nevertheless the citizens of Afghanistan can smell it for the first time. They had their first democratic elections in their history. The transfer of power was despite a number of 'undemocratic' events to many international observers - a valiant demonstration of a deep wish to be in charge of their lives and their country. This need is in all of us - why are we so sceptical when is comes to other people? I suggest this is a basic human right - akin in a Darwinian sense to societal evolution. Only advanced democratic societies can discover new ideas like the - World Wide Web in Britain by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, or in the United States like Google, Apple, Facebook etc. The reason I say this is because the sine qua non is the necessity to think freely. Limit thinking and you limit a societies ability to change and 'evolve'. In my opinion one of the most important dates in England's history is the 30th January 1649 - the execution of King Charles I. This was the first successful democratic revolution the English Civil War between 1642 - 1651. This meant that Parliament was above the King. In other words we could now think for ourselves and not be told what to think. The head had gone! The Taliban should now worry because the people of Afghanistan can think for themselves. Thinking as all dictators know is potentially very dangerous. Churchill wisely said in 1945 after the British electorate had given him the boot "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others have been tried".
Is there a correlation between democracy and cricket? Some say yes - although America to their shame don't play the game - so its not a causal connection. Although there is a team in New York. The Afghanistan Cricket Team (yes there is one) were granted recognition by the International Cricket Council (ICC) to play international games - one day they will be seen at the Mecca of cricket Lords. Someone once said sagaciously "the English invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity".