This great game of ours has boundaries but no limits. In that famous and fond documentary on Afghanistan, "Out of the Ashes", Taj Malik, the man who made cricket possible in the war-torn country, says, in his lovable Afghani accent, "You know..in this whole wide world there is a lot of problems, lot of sadness and injustice, Cricket..is the solution of it all"

It may not yet be ripe to call them the next inspirational story of our sport but Sweden is seeing their own great essay of passion and love for this game emerge with the resurgence and livelihood of various war refugees from Afghanistan and Pakistan in their country.  

Cricket was hardly played in the country that was long won over by the traditionally fitting Ice Hockey but the nation now has 65 cricket teams domestically. 

Tariq Zuwak, chairman of the Swedish Cricket Federation, was recently quoted on Times of India as, "Three or four years ago, we had only 13 clubs in Sweden and the number of players was around 600 or 700," 

With four divisions, the federation now counts more than 2,000 players with half having acquired Swedish citizenship, the other half are still waiting. Just a handful of players are actually native of Sweden. 

Saeed Ahmed is just 18 year old but has already seen himself migrating from his motherland in Kabul to a new country in 2015. He has impressed the U-19 coach David Williman with his batting. Which, he says, needs improvement. 

Tariq Zuwak says that players like Saeed and other refugees who are applying their trade in Sweden are products of "the global situation in recent years,"

Sweden has registered around 400,000 asylum applications since 2012 with more than one in eight coming from Afghanistan. 

Tariq further says, "The youngsters miss their families and are worried about their asylum process. But when they play cricket, there is nothing else on their mind than having fun," 

Sweden are currently featuring in the qualifier round for the ICC World T20 in 2020 and has the sky as the limit of how far they can reach with people like Tariq Zuwak and these refugees, who find solace and solution to all the problems in the world through this great game, around. 

(Inputs from Times of India)