India-Bangladesh tensions rock cricket, as sport turns diplomatic weapon

New Delhi, India – On January 3, 2026, a azygous directive from the Board of Control for Cricket successful India (BCCI) softly ended the Indian Premier League (IPL) play of Bangladesh’s lone cricketer successful the tournament, Mustafizur Rahman, earlier it could adjacent begin.

The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), a nonrecreational Twenty20 franchise based successful Kolkata that competes successful the IPL and is owned by Red Chillies Entertainment, associated with Bollywood histrion Shah Rukh Khan, were instructed by India’s cricket committee to merchandise the Bangladesh accelerated bowler.

Not due to the fact that of injury, form, oregon declaration disputes, but owed to “developments each around” – an evident notation to soaring tensions betwixt India and Bangladesh that person been precocious since ousted erstwhile Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina received exile successful New Delhi successful August 2024.

Within days, Mustafizur signed up for the Pakistan Super League (PSL), the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) protested sharply, the IPL broadcast was banned successful Bangladesh, and the International Cricket Council (ICC) – the assemblage that governs the athletics globally – was pulled into a diplomatic standoff.

What should person been a regular subordinate transaction alternatively became a awesome of however cricket successful South Asia has shifted from a instrumentality of diplomacy to an instrumentality of governmental pressure.

Cricket has agelong been the subcontinent’s soft-power language, a shared obsession that survived wars, borderline closures, and diplomatic freezes. Today, that connection is being rewritten, accidental observers and analysts.

India, the fiscal and governmental centre of satellite cricket, is progressively utilizing its dominance of the athletics to signal, punish, and coerce its neighbours, peculiarly Pakistan and Bangladesh, they say.

The Mustafizur affair: When authorities entered the dressing room

Rahman was signed by KKR for 9.2 cardinal Indian rupees ($1m) earlier the IPL 2026 season.

Yet the BCCI instructed the franchise to merchandise him, citing vague outer developments wide understood to beryllium linked to governmental tensions betwixt India and Bangladesh.

The consequences were immediate.

Mustafizur, improbable to person compensation due to the fact that the termination was not injury-related, accepted an connection from the PSL – picking the Pakistani league aft an Indian snub – returning to the tourney aft 8 years.

The PSL confirmed his information earlier its January 21 draft. The BCB, meanwhile, called the BCCI’s involution “discriminatory and insulting”.

Dhaka escalated the substance beyond cricket, asking the ICC to determination Bangladesh’s matches from the upcoming T20 World Cup, which India is chiefly hosting, to Sri Lanka implicit information concerns.

The Bangladeshi authorities went further, banning the broadcast of the IPL nationwide, a uncommon measurement that underlined however profoundly cricket intersects with authorities and nationalist sentiment successful South Asia.

The BCB connected January 7 said the International Cricket Council (ICC) has assured it of Bangladesh’s afloat and uninterrupted information successful the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026, dismissing media reports of immoderate ultimatum.

The BCB said the ICC responded to its concerns implicit the information and information of the nationalist squad successful India, including a petition to relocate matches, and reaffirmed its committedness to safeguarding Bangladesh’s information portion expressing willingness to enactment intimately with the Board during elaborate information planning.

Yet for now, Bangladesh’s matches stay scheduled for the Indian megacities of Kolkata and Mumbai from February 7, 2026, adjacent arsenic tensions simmer.

Navneet Rana, a BJP person said that nary Bangladeshi cricketer oregon personage should beryllium “entertained successful India” portion Hindus and minorities are being targeted successful Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, Indian Congress person Shashi Tharoor questioned the determination to merchandise Mustafizur Rahman, informing against politicising athletics and punishing idiosyncratic players for developments successful different country.

A pattern, not an exception

The Mustafizur contention fits into a broader trajectory.

While each cricket boards run wrong governmental realities, the BCCI’s unsocial fiscal powerfulness gives it leverage unmatched by immoderate different assemblage successful the sport, accidental analysts.

The ICC, the sport’s planetary body, is headed by Jay Shah, the lad of India’s almighty location curate Amit Shah – wide seen arsenic the second-most influential antheral successful India aft Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The IPL, meanwhile, is by acold the richest franchise league successful the world.

India, with 1.5 cardinal people, is cricket’s biggest marketplace and generates an estimated 80 percent of the sport’s revenue.

All of that, accidental analysts, gives India the quality to signifier scheduling of events and matches, venues, and revenue-sharing arrangements. This, successful turn, has made cricket a strategical plus for the Indian government.

When governmental relations sour, cricket is nary longer insulated.

Nowhere is this clearer than successful India’s narration with Bangladesh astatine the moment. India has historically been viewed arsenic adjacent to Hasina, whose ouster successful 2024 followed weeks of fashionable protests that her information forces attempted to crush utilizing brutal force. An estimated 1,400 radical were killed successful that crackdown, according to the United Nations.

India has truthful acold refused to nonstop Hasina backmost to Bangladesh from exile, adjacent though a tribunal successful Dhaka sentenced her to decease successful precocious 2025 implicit the killings of protesters during the uprising that led to her removal. That has spurred sentiments against India connected the streets of Bangladesh, which escalated aft the assassination of an anti-India protestation person successful December.

Meanwhile, attacks connected Hindus and different spiritual minorities successful Bangladesh since August 2024 – a Hindu Bangladeshi antheral was lynched past period – person caused choler successful India.

Against that backdrop, the BCCI’s determination to footwear Rahman retired of the IPL has drawn disapproval from Indian commentators. Senior writer Vir Sanghvi wrote successful a file that the cricket committee “panicked” and surrendered to communal unit alternatively of lasting by its ain player-selection process, turning a sporting contented into a diplomatic embarrassment.

He argued Bangladesh did not warrant a athletics boycott and warned that mixing communal authorities with cricket risks damaging India’s credibility and determination ties.

Echoing the concern, Suhasini Haidar, diplomatic exertion of The Hindu, 1 of India’s largest dailies, said connected X that the authorities was allowing societal media campaigns to overpower diplomacy. She referred to however Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar had travelled precocious to Dhaka to be the ceremonial of erstwhile Bangladesh PM Khaleda Zia, and wondered wherefore Bangladeshi cricketers couldn’t past play successful India.

Cricket expert Darminder Joshi said the occurrence reflected however cricket, erstwhile a span betwixt India and its neighbours, was progressively widening divisions.

That was peculiarly disposable precocious past year, erstwhile India and Pakistan faced disconnected successful cricket matches months aft an aggravated four-day aerial war.

The Asia Cup standoff

The 2025 Asia Cup, hosted by Pakistan successful September, was meant to beryllium a solemnisation of determination cricket.

But citing authorities advice, the BCCI informed the ICC and the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) – the sport’s continental governing assemblage – that India would not question to Pakistan.

After months of wrangling, the tourney was held nether a hybrid model, with India playing its matches successful the United Arab Emirates portion the remainder were hosted successful Pakistan.

But successful 3 matches that the South Asian rivals played against each different during the contention – India won each 3 – the Indian squad refused to publically shingle hands with their Pakistani counterparts.

“There is nary regularisation successful cricket that mandates a handshake. Yet players often necktie each other’s shoelaces oregon assistance opponents connected the field, that is the tone of the game,” Joshi, the cricket analyst, told Al Jazeera. “If countries are successful conflict, volition players present garbage adjacent these gestures? Such incidents lone dispersed hatred and portion the crippled of what makes it special.

“Sporting exchanges erstwhile softened bilateral tensions; this determination does precisely the opposite, making the crippled much hostile alternatively of much interesting.”

The contention did not extremity with the final. India won the tournament, defeating Pakistan, but refused to judge the trophy from ACC President Mohsin Naqvi, who is besides the Pakistan Cricket Board president and Pakistan’s interior minister.

The trophy remains astatine the ACC office successful Dubai, creating an unprecedented limbo that has defied solution contempt aggregate ICC and ACC meetings. The BCCI requested that the trophy beryllium sent to India. Naqvi has refused.

From span to divider

Unlike Pakistan, Bangladesh has historically enjoyed smoother cricketing ties with India. Bilateral bid continued adjacent during governmental disagreements, and Bangladeshi players became acquainted faces successful the IPL.

The Mustafizur occurrence marks a turning point. The existent infinitesimal stands successful stark opposition to earlier eras erstwhile cricket was deliberately utilized to soften governmental hostilities.

The astir celebrated illustration remains India’s 2004 circuit of Pakistan, the alleged “Friendship Series”.

That circuit took spot aft years of frozen ties pursuing the Kargil War, an equipped struggle betwixt India and Pakistan that took spot from May to July 1999.

The then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee personally met the Indian squad earlier departure, handing skipper Sourav Ganguly a bat inscribed with the Hindi words: “Khel hullo nahi, dil bhi jeetiye” which translates to “don’t conscionable triumph matches, triumph hearts too”.

Special cricket visas allowed thousands of Indian fans to question crossed the border. Pakistani then-President Pervez Musharraf followed the games and publically lauded Indian cricketers who developed followings of their ain successful Pakistan.

The 2008 Mumbai attacks, carried retired by fighters that Pakistan acknowledged had travel from its territory, froze cricketing ties.

But successful 2011, erstwhile India and Pakistan faced disconnected successful the World Cup semifinal successful Mohali, Indian then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited his Pakistani counterpart, Yousuf Raza Gilani, implicit – the 2 premiers watched the lucifer unneurotic successful what was wide seen arsenic an enactment of “cricket diplomacy”.

By intervening successful a franchise-level declaration and linking it, nevertheless obliquely, to geopolitical tensions arsenic has happened with the Mustafizur case, the BCCI sent a wide message, accidental analysts: Access to Indian cricket is conditional.

Sport writer Nishant Kapoor told Al Jazeera that releasing a contracted subordinate purely connected governmental grounds was “absolutely wrong” and warned it would widen mistrust successful the cricketing ecosystem.

“He is simply a cricketer. What incorrect has helium done?” Kapoor said.