<p>UNLESS you’ve been perpetually asleep since 1947, Pakistan’s <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1970421">refusal</a> to play an upcoming T20 World Cup group match against India would come as no surprise. Cricket between India and Pakistan has often been seen as a proxy war, and it used to be that this ‘war’ was played out on the field, with the competition between bat and ball determining victory and defeat. That was then. In recent times, even the selection of venues and itineraries has been weaponised. This is now.</p>
<p>You could make a convincing case that India started it, and Pakistan has finally had no option but to respond with tit for tat. India’s cricketers haven’t played in Pakistan since 2008, when the Asia Cup was held in Karachi. Over this period, Pakistan has nevertheless played at Indian venues no less than 19 times, the last in November 2023 as part of the ODI World Cup. Initially, India’s refusal could be justified as a matter of safety and security. After all, even Pakistan’s own team was forced to play in the UAE for several years after the Lahore terrorism of 2009.</p>
<p>Yet once Pakistan’s security situation improved and other top-tier teams such as Australia, South Africa, England and New Zealand returned to play at Pakistani venues, India’s cricket board had to fetch another excuse. It came up with the notion of “government permission”, effectively ceding decision-making to the hardline BJP, India’s current ruling party. The mask was finally off.</p>
<p>As a result of this Indian intransigence, Pakistan’s hosting of last year’s Champions Trophy was reduced to a farce. While the rest of the eight-team tournament proceeded happily in Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi, India was <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1894430">allowed</a> to play all five of its matches in Dubai, including a high-voltage group match versus Pakistan on Feb 23 as well as the tournament final on March 9. What explains this extreme asymmetry is India’s clout as a cricketing superpower. With its massive billion-plus audience, India has dominated world cricket through revenues, sponsorships, lobbying and, ultimately, commandeering of the International Cricket Council (ICC), the global body of cricket governance. The situation had become very frustrating for Pakistan to the point that it seemed we had no agency in the matter, no cards left to play.</p>
<p>Two recent dramatic political developments, however, have reset this calculus. One was the <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1850245">overthrow</a> of Indian-backed Sheikh Hasina Wajid in Bangladesh, which has ignited a storm of Bangladeshi fury towards its meddling western neighbour. The other was the backfiring adventurism of <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1908988">Operation Sindoor</a>, which has infused Pakistani administrators with a newfound confidence in their posture towards India. The ripples of these two convulsions have now converged in the cricketing world.</p>
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<p>In pure cricketing terms, forfeiting a group match seems a needless own-goal. But a point had to be made, and the PCB did it cleverly.</p>
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<p>First came Bangladesh’s <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1967562">request</a> to the ICC to have their upcoming World Cup matches shifted outside India to Sri Lanka, a concession that Pakistan had already extracted. Ostensibly triggered by the unexplained expulsion of a Bangladeshi player from an Indian Premier League franchise, Bangladesh’s reluctance to play in India actually reflects worsening political ties. Emboldened by Bangladesh, Pakistan too dug in its heels, announcing ongoing internal deliberations, with a final call on World Cup participation to be made by the Pakistani government on Feb 1. That decision was made public in a tweet: Pakistan would play the World Cup but boycott the group match versus India. The possibility of facing India at a later stage of the tournament was left unaddressed.</p>
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<p>In pure cricketing terms, forfeiting a group match seems a needless own-goal by the Pakistan Cricket Board, because you are throwing away two valuable points and jeopardising qualification to the next stage. But a point had to be made, and the PCB did it cleverly. Pakistan has a terrible record against India in ICC tournaments, and it is highly likely we would have lost this match anyway. Fortunately, our other three opponents in the group stage are all associate-level teams which, although potentially a banana peel, is no mountain to climb either. Meanwhile, we have deprived the Indian public of its favourite spectacle — thrashing Pakistan at cricket. Simply put, these matches have become television gold for India. The India-Pakistan match in the 2023 ODI World Cup attracted a collective (terrestrial and digital) viewership of over 400 million, and the viewership of last year’s Champions Trophy India-Pakistan match exceeded 800m. The now-defunct encounter of Feb 15 would surely have garnered similar numbers. Should India and Pakistan clash later at the knockout stage, you can be assured all viewership records will be broken.</p>
<p>This selective boycott has triggered polite chatter in Pakistani circles while unleashing uproar in India. That tells you how effective it’s been. Indian hardliners are livid and the Indian public is crushed with disappointment. At the same time, some sensible Indian voices have also emerged. Shashi Tharoor, the erudite Indian politician and scholar, has urged India to reach out to Pakistan and Bangladesh under ICC’s umbrella and “call off this nonsense”. Sharda Ugra, a respected Indian cricket journalist, has laid the blame squarely on India’s cricket board, accusing it of petty egoism and institutional failure.</p>
<p>The real <a href="https://www.dawn.com/news/1968999">tragedy</a> in this clutter, apart from cricket itself, is Bangladesh, who have every reason to feel hard done by. The could easily have played their matches in Sri Lanka, following Pakistan’s precedent; yet the ICC threatened them with replacement, and that threat was eventually carried out. This leaves the ICC with a lot to answer for. As an organisation tasked with the welfare of global cricket, it should be a neutral body; instead, it has been reduced to a mouthpiece for India. All cricketing nations need to join forces, take principled stands, and hold the ICC accountable. The costs of doing nothing are simply too high.</p>
<p><em>The writer, a professor of neurology at Aga Khan University, has written on cricket for international publications.</em></p>
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<p><em>Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2026</em></p>