After Pakistan announced a boycott of the upcoming T20I World Cup match against India, the International Cricket Council (ICC) was quick to deplore the position imposed on fans by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB). “(Pakistan’s) decision is not in the interest of the global game or the welfare of fans around the world,” the ICC said in a release, before going on to make special mention of “the millions of people in Pakistan.” I can’t wait for the match in India.
Through this statement and last week’s statement justifying the ICC’s ultimatum to the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), which ultimately led to Bangladesh’s withdrawal from the tournament, the ICC committed itself to the ideals of fairness and equality. The “honesty and sanctity” of the World Cup and the “neutrality and impartiality” of such events were evoked.
Of course, Pakistan fans may think that India’s refusal to play in Pakistan prior to the 2025 Champions Trophy did not actually raise such concerns for purely political reasons. Coincidentally, the semi-finals and final of that tournament ended up being moved away from Pakistan as the ICC adopted a ‘hybrid’ model in which India played all its matches outside the ‘host’ country, with the magnetism of Indian cricket drawing the finals to Dubai.
This was a key moment that put cricket on its current trajectory. Two of the oldest cricketing nations on earth are falling into a mutual feud, with Pakistan insisting it will not travel to India for this year’s T20 World Cup in exchange for India refusing to play on its own. In the run-up to this World Cup, Bangladesh has also been thrown into the fray, with the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise’s sacking of Bangladeshi bowler Mustafizur Rahman, resulting in Bangladesh’s demand for all matches to be played in Sri Lanka (co-hosting the tournament with India) to be completely waived.
Any claims that any of these boycotts are based on security concerns are actually bogus. A security review ordered by the ICC found that India was well-equipped for Bangladesh’s visit, but Pakistan hosts ICC-sanctioned international cricket with multiple touring teams, and Pakistan had hosted all One-Day International (ODI) World Cup matches in India by 2023.
But what is also clear is that the ICC has allowed South Asian countries, now torn apart for decades, to become a vehicle for exchanging geopolitical blows. Moreover, the ICC has begun favoring certain geopolitical ambitions over others, and far from taking criticism of its refusal to play in Pakistan in stride, India’s men’s team’s refusal to shake hands with Pakistani players at last year’s Asia Cup is now adopted across the boards of the BCCI’s teams, women’s teams and under-19 teams. Next lawsuit. To take the ICC at face value would also require believing that ICC Chairman Jay Shah operates completely separate from India’s Home Minister Amit Shah.
The main driver of this imbalance is India’s incredible cricket economy. Ever since the takeover of the ICC by the Big Three (India, Australia and England) in 2014 veered cricket down a hyper-capitalist path, the game’s top administrators have been adamant that it is profit that defines the contours of cricket. Since India is the source of much of the competition’s finances, the ICC has structured the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to receive nearly 40 per cent of the ICC’s net profits, while international men’s cricket cedes most of a fifth of its calendar to the IPL. Drivers, who are a strong driver of the sport’s economic growth, need protection, or so the official position is. It has long been believed that if the member boards do not live up to BCCI’s agenda at the ICC, the BCCI could threaten to cancel India’s next visit to the country, thereby crushing the small board’s revenue. The vote to issue that ultimatum to BCB was 14-2 against Bangladesh. Boards must never forget whose table they are eating at.
After 12 years of touting economic power, it comes as no surprise that politics has now begun to infringe on even the game’s financial obligations. It has been a basic tenet of economics for generations that monopolies tend to produce a terrible reduction in consumer choice. Hundreds of millions of Bangladeshi fans will learn this in the coming weeks, as will the rest of the cricketing world when India and Pakistan were scheduled to play on February 15. It is also a long-standing principle of political economy that profit-driven systems that equate wealth with power often lack checks on the most powerful.
Bangladesh’s absence will definitely bring down the competitive standard of the tournament as well. Bangladesh’s track record in cricket is, with all due respect, much smaller than that of Scotland, which Bangladesh replaced. Here too there is a warning for other cricketing economies. Although Bangladesh’s broadcasting revenue is currently only a fraction of the mountain that India generates, Bangladesh’s macroeconomic indicators (population growth, improving gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, and inequality-adjusted Human Development Index (IHDI) ranking) suggest the market will grow in the coming decades. If the ICC intends to freeze Bangladesh’s potential full membership, what will happen to the more vulnerable boards, such as Sri Lanka, New Zealand and the West Indies?
The irony for many boards is that for more than a decade they have primarily contributed to the BCCI’s agenda at the ICC and helped expand its financial dominance. Since the Big Three first split the ICC’s governance and finances in 2014, most smaller boards have enthusiastically supported the BCCI’s program, believing it could only survive by placating India, which in itself amounts to a tacit admission of an abysmal lack of ambition. Still, after more than a decade of transporting this water, they were forced into an equally dire position. In fact, some of the smaller regular members have left.
For example, Sri Lanka Cricket has become one of the BCCI’s most loyal allies in recent years. However, it has been more than a dozen years since a senior team reached the semi-finals of a world tournament. Their Test cricket survives, but just barely, with an increasingly tenuous schedule. Sri Lankan men played just four Tests last year and only six Tests remain in 2026. Meanwhile, West Indies cricket has also not seen a major resurgence on the field, with their men’s T20 fortunes declining since 2016, while their men’s and women’s ODI teams failed to qualify for the recent World Cup. Zimbabwean cricket is in the same difficult position it was in 20 years ago.
New Zealand and South Africa have the upper hand on the field, especially in women’s cricket and Test formats. But to get to this point, Cricket South Africa (CSA), in particular, had to be publicly reprimanded by the BCCI – in 2013, when India cut short their tour of Africa after BCCI objected to the appointment of a CEO it didn’t like. Recently, Pakistani players were also unable to play in the T20, South Africa’s top league, as each SA20 franchise owner is based in India. Excluding athletes based on their birth status goes against the sporting ethos of post-apartheid South Africa. But even this national ambition has been stifled by India’s political interests. Smaller boards have become more dependent on inflows of funds from India, and India is increasingly choosing the conditions for the survival of the cricket world.
Now, the World Cup is about to begin, where Bangladesh has learned its toughest lesson. BCB was one of the first small boards to sign on to cede power to the Big Three during its first acquisition in 2014. As of 2026, it can be seen that BCB does not have much support for reasons other than cricket.
India is undoubtedly the greatest cricketing nation of all time. Even in the days of the Imperial Cricket Conference (precursor to the ICC), Australia and England could perhaps have been relied upon to check each other’s most predatory instincts. Such a check would not hold if one board was the sun and the rest were just planets in its orbit. The lesson for the CA and the ECB, perhaps the BCCI’s most enthusiastic allies, is that there may come a time when India too decides that its use-by date has passed. Why shouldn’t the BCCI finally freeze them? Isn’t India just doing what all other superpowers tend to do: exploit its incredible power until all other countries comply or are forced out? And why do BCCI’s ambitions fall short of swallowing even those established markets?
Cricket has now made its allegiance clear and, despite the ICC’s rhetoric, its commitment is no longer to neutrality and competitive balance, which are the vital fundamentals of any sport. Other committees have allowed India’s will to be so prevalent that India’s motives need not be solely economic. They can become overtly political. And in this dark intersection between money and politics, crickets are being eaten alive.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial stance of Al Jazeera.
