Why India Keeps Winning - And Why Pakistan Keeps Falling Short

In every clash between India and Pakistan, emotion arrives long before strategy. Narratives inflate, hype grows louder, and millions wait for another chapter in cricket’s most emotionally charged rivalry. Yet when the contest begins, the same uncomfortable question returns with remarkable regularity: why does India keep winning?

The simplest answer is also the hardest for many fans to accept, because Pakistan repeatedly loses its composure when the stakes rise.

Recent encounters have often felt less like battles between equals and more like lessons in control. Pakistan’s batting, particularly in the top and middle order, has too frequently looked impatient and reckless, as if the occasion overwhelms the plan. Rash strokes, hurried decisions, and a disregard for match context turn pressure games into self-inflicted collapses. Against a side like India, such errors are not just mistakes; they are invitations to defeat.

Modern cricket, even in the shortest formats, is not built on blind aggression. The best T20 innings emerge from technical clarity, intelligent strike rotation, and controlled risk-taking. India consistently shows that balance. Pakistan, too often, abandons it.

A Team Running on Reputation

The deeper problem lies beyond individual matches. Pakistan cricket increasingly appears to run on reputation rather than performance. The aura remains powerful, the marketing louder than ever, but substance rarely survives the biggest moments. Players become symbols before they become consistent match-winners.

Take Babar Azam, arguably the face of modern Pakistan cricket. Gifted and elegant, he is widely praised for his technique, yet the criticism grows louder when the pressure rises against elite opposition. His career reflects the central frustration of this era: undeniable talent, but not enough defining performances on the biggest stages. The gap between narrative and output feels wider than ever.

The Structural Problem Beneath the Surface

The issue is not simply about one player or one series. Cricketing cultures are built over decades, and historically, that foundation was Test cricket. Test cricket develops patience, decision-making, and technical discipline, qualities that naturally strengthen performance in shorter formats.

Pakistan, however, appears increasingly seduced by the quick rewards of franchise T20 cricket: instant fame, rapid financial gain, and constant media attention. Ironically, even in the format they prioritize, consistency remains elusive. The shortcut has not produced excellence; it has produced fragility.

India’s success is therefore not accidental. It reflects systems, depth, preparation, and a culture that rewards adaptability under pressure. Pakistan’s failures feel more self-authored, born from tactical impatience, misplaced priorities, and an overreliance on raw talent without structural discipline.

Remembering an Older Standard

Pakistan cricket once thrived on players who rose under pressure rather than shrinking from it. Ijaz Ahmed may not have been the most celebrated name of his era, but he repeatedly produced match-winning innings against the strongest sides, Australia, the West Indies of the 1980s and 1990s, England, and India. He was underrated, yet reliable when it mattered most.

That comparison inevitably raises difficult questions about the current generation. Pakistan today has stars, but fewer proven big-moment performers.

Heroes, Hype, and the Burden of Expectation

In the subcontinent, cricket is more than a sport; it is a cultural identity. Media narratives create heroes, crowds rally behind them, and expectations grow enormous. Those who justify that faith become icons like Imran Khan, Sachin Tendulkar, Virat Kohli, Wasim Akram, or Waqar Younis, players whose performances matched the mythology.

But hype without consistent performance eventually becomes a burden. When perception outruns results, criticism grows inevitable. Modern Pakistan cricket often feels trapped in that cycle: star narratives created early, but performances that struggle to sustain them.

The Rivalry Deserves Better

India’s dominance is not a mystery. It is the product of systems, patience, and composure under pressure. Pakistan’s repeated stumbles are not due to a lack of talent, but a lack of clarity, tactical, structural, and cultural.

Until Pakistan rediscovers patience, respects the long game, and rebuilds its identity from the ground up, the pattern is unlikely to change: massive hype, rising expectation, and familiar disappointment against teams that treat pressure as an ally rather than an enemy.

The rivalry deserves better. Cricket deserves better.

Thank You 

Faisal Caesar 

Stewardship Over Stardom: Why Aminul Islam’s Leadership Could Redefine Bangladesh Cricket

For much of Bangladesh cricket’s modern history, leadership has oscillated between administrative power and political influence. Rarely has it been shaped by deep cricketing literacy combined with institutional experience. The rise of Aminul Islam as President of the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) represents a potentially transformative shift, not simply because of who he is, but because of what he represents.

At a time when Bangladesh cricket is navigating both global power politics and domestic structural fragility, Aminul’s leadership offers something the board has historically lacked: credibility across dressing rooms, governance corridors, and international cricket diplomacy.

This is not nostalgia for a former player. It is a case study in why technically informed leadership matters in modern sport governance.

From Pioneer to Rebuilder: The Symbolism Matters

Aminul Islam belongs to the generation that built Bangladesh cricket when it barely existed. In an era when football dominated national imagination and cricket funding was almost nonexistent, players like him carried the sport on passion alone.

His Test century in Bangladesh’s inaugural Test was not just a statistical milestone, it was psychological nation-building. It told a young cricket nation that it belonged at the highest level.

That historical legitimacy now translates into administrative capital. Unlike many career administrators, Aminul understands the emotional economy of Bangladesh cricket — the fragile relationship between expectation, pressure, and identity.

And in a country where cricket is not just sport but national expression, that matters.

The Administrator Who Understands Systems, Not Just Scorecards

Perhaps the strongest argument for Aminul’s presidency is his systemic worldview.

His diagnosis of Bangladesh cricket’s long-standing weaknesses is brutally honest:

• No consistent selection philosophy

• Weak domestic-to-international transition pipeline

• Decades-long stagnation in advanced coaching education

• Dhaka-centric administrative power concentration

• Poor first-class infrastructure and wicket quality

Rather than chasing short-term ranking targets, his focus on ecosystem rebuilding signals strategic maturity. Modern cricket success is not produced by talent alone, it is produced by systems that allow talent to mature.

The launch of Level-3 coaching programs after nearly two decades of absence is not headline news. But it is the kind of reform that changes national team performance five to ten years later.

That is long-term governance thinking, something Bangladesh cricket has historically struggled to sustain.

The “Triple Century” Vision: A Governance Charter, Not a Slogan

The Triple Century Programme represents perhaps the first attempt to create a unified philosophical roadmap for Bangladesh cricket.

Its pillars, protecting the spirit of the game, performance excellence, national cricket connectivity, and institutional modernization, are less about branding and more about structural alignment.

The most radical component is decentralization.

For decades, Bangladesh cricket functioned as a Dhaka command economy. Talent identification, selection influence, league structures, all radiated from a single administrative center.

Aminul’s push to create divisional cricket leadership, regional selection pathways, and local cricket offices is not just administrative reform. It is democratization of cricket opportunity.

In cricketing terms, decentralization means survival.

Moral Authority in a Politicized Cricket Environment

One of the most striking aspects of Aminul’s presidency is personal sacrifice. By openly stating he draws no salary and is funding parts of his own travel, he is reframing the moral psychology of cricket administration.

In a system historically criticized for patronage networks, that symbolic break matters.

It creates narrative contrast: Not power for privilege.

Power for stewardship.

In sports governance, perception often drives institutional trust as much as policy.

The Diplomatic Operator: The 2026 Crisis as Leadership Test

The T20 World Cup crisis may ultimately be remembered as the first major stress test of his presidency.

Reports suggest Bangladesh moved from potential sanctions territory to:

• Zero penalties

• Preserved ICC revenue share

• Secured future ICC event hosting window

• Expanded international match hosting opportunities

More importantly, Bangladesh positioned itself as a stabilizing diplomatic actor rather than a reactive participant.

Aminul’s international exposure through ICC and ACC appears to have translated into negotiation literacy, understanding how global cricket power actually functions beyond public statements.

This is modern cricket geopolitics: quiet leverage, not loud confrontation.

Restoring Cricket Culture: The Soft Power Battle

Perhaps his most underrated focus is cultural restoration.

His repeated concern that domestic achievements and emerging players are ignored by media signals a deeper worry: Bangladesh is losing its cricket narrative identity.

If fans only engage with controversy and not cricketing excellence, talent pathways eventually weaken.

Reviving cricket culture, school cricket, madrasa cricket, district leagues, club participation is not nostalgia. It is pipeline security.

Every major cricket nation that declined structurally first lost its grassroots competitive culture.

The Risk: Long-Term Vision vs Short-Term Public Patience

The greatest challenge Aminqul faces is not structural. It is psychological.

Bangladesh cricket culture is conditioned toward immediate performance validation. But systemic rebuilds rarely show visible success inside one election cycle.

If his governance model survives the pressure of short-term results politics, Bangladesh cricket could emerge structurally stronger by the early 2030s.

If not, the cycle of partial reform and reset will continue.

The Strategic Significance: Why This Presidency Matters Beyond Bangladesh

If successful, Aminul’s model could become a blueprint for mid-tier cricket nations:

- Former elite player

- Global governance experience

- Systems-first reform strategy

- Moral credibility narrative

- Regional diplomatic awareness

- That combination is rare in global cricket administration.

The Verdict: Leadership as Trust, Not Authority

Aminul Islam’s greatest strength may not be policy, diplomacy, or cricketing pedigree individually.

It is trust.

Trust from players, because he has lived their reality.

Trust from international bodies , because he speaks governance language.

Trust from fans, because he represents cricket before power.

Bangladesh cricket does not just need modernization.

It needs legitimacy in how modernization happens.

If his reforms take root, Aminul Islam may not just be remembered as Bangladesh’s first Test centurion.

He may be remembered as the architect of Bangladesh cricket’s second founding.

Thank You 

Faisal Caesar 

The South Asian Pivot: How Bangladesh and Pakistan Outmaneuvered Cricket’s Power Axis

For nearly two decades, global cricket’s power map has been drawn along a predictable axis: India for money, Dubai for governance. The financial dominance of India’s cricket economy, combined with the ICC’s structural dependence on Indian broadcast revenue, has created an ecosystem where most boards operate within quiet constraints. Compliance has often been safer than confrontation.

But the fallout from the 2026 T20 World Cup standoff may mark the first credible disruption of that order. In what increasingly looks like a calculated geopolitical play rather than a reactive boycott, Bangladesh and Pakistan demonstrated that financial power is not the same as strategic leverage.

This was not just resistance. It was maneuver warfare.

The “No-Penalty” Doctrine: Bangladesh’s Strategic Breakthrough

Bangladesh’s refusal to travel to India could, under traditional ICC logic, have triggered a cascade of punishment, fines, funding cuts, or even temporary isolation from ICC revenue pools. Instead, something unprecedented happened: nothing.

- No fines.

- No administrative sanctions.

Full tournament payments despite non-participation.

That outcome matters far beyond one tournament. It establishes a soft but powerful precedent, that sovereign or security-linked decisions can override purely commercial participation obligations.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board did not simply avoid punishment; it reshaped the language of enforcement. By pushing the ICC toward “facilitative support” rather than disciplinary action, Bangladesh effectively carved out a diplomatic escape hatch for member boards operating under government directives.

In a sport where commercial commitments have often trumped political realities, this was a structural shift.

Pakistan’s Financial Checkmate

If Bangladesh created the opening, Pakistan executed the decisive move.

By quietly linking their participation, especially in the India–Pakistan fixture, to Bangladesh’s treatment, Pakistan forced the ICC to confront an uncomfortable truth: the global tournament economy is not built only on Indian cricket. It is built on Indian rivalries.

The India–Pakistan match is not just another game. It is the tournament’s financial spine. Remove it, and the broadcast model fractures.

The estimated threat, roughly ₹2000 crore in projected losses, was not theoretical. Broadcasters, sponsors, and advertisers structure entire campaign cycles around that single fixture.

Pakistan understood something crucial:

Power in cricket is not only about who generates the most money.

It is about who can withdraw the most money from the system.

That is leverage. And it worked.

The symbolic image of senior ICC leadership travelling to Lahore to negotiate signaled something deeper than crisis management. It suggested recognition, however reluctant, that Pakistan remains a central power broker when it chooses to assert itself.

Turning Exclusion into Strategic Gain: The Hosting Dividend

Perhaps the most tangible outcome of this standoff is the reported commitment to allocate Bangladesh a standalone ICC event before the 2031 ODI World Cup cycle.

If this holds, it represents a quiet institutional bypass of the traditional bidding hierarchy. Normally, hosting rights are fought over through multi-year lobbying, infrastructure audits, and political negotiation.

Bangladesh appears to have achieved through leverage what others pursue through process.

From a strategic standpoint, hosting rights are not just about matches. They are about:

• Stadium modernization

• Government investment flows

• Tourism branding

• Long-term integration into global scheduling priority

In effect, Bangladesh converted short-term exclusion into long-term structural inclusion.

That is textbook strategic negotiation.

The Rise of South Asian Bloc Politics in Cricket

The most overlooked element of this episode is regional coordination.

With Pakistan applying financial pressure and Sri Lanka playing mediator, the dispute briefly resembled a coordinated South Asian negotiating bloc. Historically, South Asian cricket has been fragmented by bilateral tensions and competing economic interests.

This time, history, including memories of regional solidarity moments like the 1996 World Cup, appears to have been leveraged as diplomatic capital.

The message was subtle but unmistakable:

If India is the market, the rest of South Asia is still the ecosystem.

And ecosystems can resist monopolies.

The New Power Equation: Market Size vs Collective Leverage

The biggest myth this episode challenges is the idea that cricket’s hierarchy is permanently fixed.

Yes, India remains the financial epicenter. That is unlikely to change. But financial centrality does not automatically translate into uncontested political control, especially when other boards act in coordinated fashion and target structural vulnerabilities in tournament economics.

What Bangladesh and Pakistan demonstrated is that:

• Participation is leverage.

• Rivalries are currency.

• Collective positioning can offset financial asymmetry.

This is not the collapse of cricket’s old order. But it may be the beginning of a negotiated order.

The Verdict: A Psychological Shift More Than an Institutional One

Institutions change slowly. Power perceptions change quickly.

And perception often precedes structural change.

The ICC and BCCI still hold enormous influence. But for the first time in years, two other boards showed they can force the system to adjust, not through rhetoric, but through calculated risk.

Bangladesh and Pakistan did not just resist pressure.

They rewrote the terms of engagement.

And in global cricket politics, that alone is a revolution.

Thank You 

Faisal Caesar 

When Cricket Becomes a Dictatorship: Nasser Hussain Calls Out India’s Power Play

Cricket has always carried a moral mythology. It was meant to be the Gentleman’s Game, a sport where rivalry ended at the boundary rope and politics stopped at the pavilion door. That mythology is now collapsing. And when Nasser Hussain publicly questions the selective morality of global cricket governance, it is not an off-hand remark, it is an indictment.

Hussain’s intervention exposes an uncomfortable truth: international cricket is no longer governed by rules, reciprocity, or sporting ethics. It is governed by money, leverage, and fear. And at the center of this imbalance sits the Indian cricket establishment, operating with the confidence of a regime that knows it cannot be challenged.

What Nasser Hussain Really Said (and Why It Matters)

Hussain’s critique is devastating precisely because it is simple. He asks the question everyone in cricket whispers but no institution dares to confront:

Would the ICC ever punish India the way it punishes others?

By raising this hypothetical, Hussain unmasks the double standards of the International Cricket Council. Bangladesh and Pakistan face swift disciplinary consequences. India, by contrast, enjoys negotiated exceptions, “neutral venues,” and moral exemptions.

This is not leadership. It is immunity.

The IPL as a Political Weapon

The most chilling example is the quiet removal of Mustafizur Rahman from Kolkata Knight Riders. This was not an injury call. It was not a cricketing decision. It was a signal.

When a domestic franchise league becomes an instrument of geopolitical pressure, cricket crosses a red line. Players stop being professionals and become hostages to national mood swings. Hussain rightly identifies this as the moment when sport gave way to coercion.

In any democratic sporting order, a legally contracted international player cannot be removed because of diplomatic discomfort. In cricket’s current ecosystem, however, Indian domestic politics now outranks international sporting law.

The Illusion of “Cricket Diplomacy”

For decades, India projected cricket as a bridge, between nations, cultures, and conflicts. Today, that bridge has become a checkpoint.

Refused handshakes. Avoided trophy ceremonies. Matches cancelled not by weather or logistics, but by ideology. What Hussain calls “depressing” is in fact something more serious: the normalization of hostility inside the dressing room.

Cricket diplomacy once softened borders. Indian cricket now hardens them.

Power Without Responsibility

The Board of Control for Cricket in India, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, commands unparalleled financial power. With that power should come stewardship. Instead, it has produced domination without accountability.

The consequences are self-defeating:

Commercial erosion: No India–Pakistan rivalry means no global spectacle. Everyone loses.

Sporting insecurity: If Mustafizur can be discarded overnight, no overseas player is safe.

Moral decay: The message is clear, compliance is rewarded, independence is punished.

This is not hegemony with vision. It is control without consequence.

The ICC’s Moral Collapse

The ICC’s role in this drama is the most damning of all. By enforcing rules rigidly on weaker boards while bending endlessly for India, as seen repeatedly in tournament arrangements like the Asia Cup, the ICC has forfeited its claim to neutrality.

A governing body that cannot govern its most powerful member is not a regulator. It is a subcontractor.

In practice, global cricket now operates on an unspoken hierarchy: some members are equal, but one member is indispensable.

A Lonely Empire at the Top

If cricket continues down this road, India may well stand alone at the summit, financially dominant, politically unchecked, and competitively isolated. But it will be a hollow peak.

The beauty of cricket lies in its pluralism: Bangladesh’s rise, Pakistan’s unpredictability, the shared chaos of rivalry. Strip those away, and the game becomes a closed circuit, loud, lucrative, and spiritually empty.

Nasser Hussain did not attack India. He defended cricket.

The real question now is whether the game still has the courage to defend itself.

Thank You

Faisal Caesar 

Cricket Under Hegemony: How India Turned a Regional Game into a Power Instrument

In South Asia, power has never been exercised only through borders, armies, or treaties. It has flowed through trade routes, water sharing, media, and quietly but decisively through cricket. What we are witnessing today is not a sporting dispute but the consolidation of regional hierarchy, with India at the apex and the rest of South Asia forced into varying degrees of compliance.

Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif’s call for an alternative global cricket body was quickly dismissed by Indian commentators as political theatrics. Yet such calls emerge only when institutional pathways collapse. His accusation that the International Cricket Council has become “hostage to Indian political interests” reflects a deeper South Asian anxiety: that multilateral platforms no longer function as neutral spaces when India’s interests are involved.

From Regional Power to Regional Enforcer

India’s dominance of cricket mirrors its broader regional posture assertive, asymmetrical, and increasingly intolerant of dissent. The Board of Control for Cricket in India is no longer just a sporting body; it is a strategic actor projecting Indian power across South Asia.

Under the current ICC revenue model, India controls nearly 40% of global cricket income. This financial concentration replicates a familiar regional pattern: economic dependency used to discipline neighbours. Smaller South Asian nations, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are structurally discouraged from challenging Indian preferences because the costs are existential.

In such an environment, “choice” becomes theoretical.

Pakistan: Too Big to Obey, Too Risky to Exclude

Pakistan occupies a unique and uncomfortable position in this hierarchy. Unlike smaller neighbours, it cannot be easily absorbed or ignored. Its boycott threat ahead of the T20 World Cup was not an act of withdrawal but a geopolitical signal, participation without consent.

This is precisely why Jay Shah, wearing both ICC authority and Indian institutional legacy, was pushed into reluctant diplomacy. The India–Pakistan fixture is not just a match; it is the single most valuable commodity in global cricket. Excluding Pakistan would fracture the commercial spine of the tournament.

The ICC’s response, dispatching Deputy Chair Imran Khwaja for quiet back-channel talks, exposed the truth: the institution cannot enforce neutrality when its biggest shareholder is also a regional hegemon.

Bangladesh and the Cost of Defiance

If Pakistan represents resistance, Bangladesh represents vulnerability.

The BCCI’s unilateral decision to release Mustafizur Rahman from the IPL, citing “political developments” - triggered a chain reaction that ended with Bangladesh refusing to tour India and being replaced by Scotland. This was not a scheduling issue; it was disciplined by substitution.

In South Asian terms, the message was unmistakable: defiance invites isolation. This is how hierarchy is maintained, not through overt bans, but through quiet rearrangements that punish without announcing punishment.

Normalising the Unthinkable

Former Indian cricketer Harbhajan Singh openly declared that India does not need Pakistan and can survive without it. Such statements matter not because they are policy, but because they reveal a mindset where exclusion is considered a legitimate option.

This is how dominance becomes normalised. First rhetorically. Then administratively. Finally, structurally.

South Asia has seen this pattern before, in trade negotiations, river water disputes, and regional diplomacy. Cricket is simply the latest arena.

The ICC as a Hollow Multilateral Shell

In theory, the ICC is a global institution. In practice, it resembles many South Asian multilateral frameworks where one power sets the rules while others adapt. When India controls revenue, scheduling, hosting rights, and broadcast windows, neutrality becomes impossible.

The result is a system where:

Smaller South Asian nations hesitate to speak.

Pakistan is managed as a “problem” rather than a stakeholder.

Decisions are framed as commercial inevitabilities rather than political choices.

This is not governance; it is a managed imbalance.

The Long-Term Cost for the Region

India’s approach may deliver short-term control, but it carries long-term risks. A region where sport mirrors political hierarchy will eventually fracture. Associate nations will stagnate. Bilateral distrust will harden. And cricket, once South Asia’s rare shared language, will become another theatre of rivalry and resentment.

You cannot build regional legitimacy on unilateral power.

If the ICC continues to function as an extension of Indian dominance rather than a counterbalance to it, South Asia will not see a golden age of cricket but a familiar story of centralised authority, silenced peripheries, and institutional decay.

Cricket does not need a new empire. It needs a genuinely plural order. Without it, the game will survive, but only as a reflection of power, not as a contest of equals.

Thank You 

Faisal Caesar 

When Cricket Stops Pretending to Be Neutral: India, Power, and the ICC’s Double Standards

Pakistan's decision to boycott its T20 World Cup match against India has been framed by much of the global media as an act of politicisation. That framing is misleading. What the boycott actually exposes is a far more uncomfortable truth: international cricket has long ceased to be neutral, and the International Cricket Council (ICC) now operates within an ecosystem structurally tilted in India’s favour.

The immediate trigger for Pakistan’s decision was security and diplomacy. Following deadly, coordinated attacks in Balochistan, attacks Pakistan’s interior minister publicly attributed to India, Islamabad chose not to proceed, with a high-profile sporting encounter against its rival. Whether or not one accepts Pakistan’s allegation, the principle involved is not novel. National governments have repeatedly exercised discretion over participation in ICC events based on security and political considerations.

What is novel is the selective outrage.

Bangladesh, Neutral Venues, and Selective Fairness

Tensions had already been building before Pakistan’s announcement. In January, Bangladesh requested that its World Cup matches be shifted away from India, citing security concerns. The ICC rejected the request outright and then went further, removing Bangladesh from the tournament altogether and replacing it with Scotland.

This decision was extraordinary. Historically, the ICC has accommodated such requests. India itself has refused to play in Pakistan for years, with its matches routinely shifted to neutral venues. England, Australia, and New Zealand have all declined tours or fixtures in the past without being expelled from tournaments or financially penalised.

Yet when Bangladesh sought identical consideration, it was denied. The principle of “neutral venues for security reasons,” long treated as legitimate when invoked by India, suddenly became unacceptable when invoked against India.

This asymmetry is the real scandal.

The ICC–BCCI Blur

The controversy has also reignited scrutiny over the increasingly blurred line between the ICC and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The perception, fair or not, is that global cricket governance is now effectively anchored in New Delhi.

That perception matters because money matters.

An India–Pakistan World Cup match is not merely a fixture; it is the tournament’s financial engine. Advertising slots during such games sell for astronomical sums. Broadcasters price entire tournament valuations around this single matchup. When Pakistan withdrew, panic followed, not in cricketing circles, but in boardrooms.

This reaction reveals the structural dependency of the ICC on India-centric commercial logic. When India advances deep into tournaments, revenues soar. When India exits early, as in the 2007 World Cup, broadcasters panic and financial models collapse. That dependency has quietly reshaped governance priorities.

Fairness, under such conditions, becomes conditional.

Precedent Matters And Pakistan Is Within It

The charge that Pakistan is “politicising cricket” collapses under historical scrutiny.

In 1996, Australia refused to play matches in Sri Lanka. In 2003, England and New Zealand declined tours citing security concerns. Zimbabwe skipped the 2009 T20 World Cup. None faced revenue sanctions. West Indies continue to receive full ICC distributions despite repeated failures to qualify for global events.

These are not exceptions. They are precedents.

ICC revenue allocation has always been structural, not punitive. Participation has never been enforced through financial coercion. To suggest otherwise now—implicitly threatening Pakistan with “long-term consequences” marks a dangerous departure from established norms.

The India Exception

What truly undermines the moral argument against Pakistan is India’s own record. India has unilaterally suspended bilateral cricket with Pakistan for over a decade without consequence. Entire Future Tours Programme cycles have been disrupted. The ICC did not intervene. No fines were imposed. No lectures were delivered about “the global game.”

Political selectivity, in other words, has already been normalised, primarily when it serves Indian preferences.

Pakistan’s response, therefore, is not radical. It is reciprocal.

Power, Not Principle

It is also worth noting that Pakistan is no longer institutionally dependent on ICC revenue in the way it once was. The Pakistan Super League has created an independent commercial base, placing the PCB among a small group of boards with financial leverage outside ICC distributions.

That reality alters the power equation. The implicit assumption that Pakistan must comply to survive is outdated.

The Real Question

This episode forces cricket to confront an uncomfortable question:

Is the ICC a multilateral sporting body, or a revenue management arm of Indian cricket?

If neutral venues are acceptable for India but unacceptable for Bangladesh, that is not governance; it is a hierarchy.

If political discretion is legitimate for some but condemned for others, that is not neutrality; it is power.

Pakistan’s boycott does not politicise cricket.

It merely exposes who has been doing so all along.

Thank You 

Faisal Caesar 

The Gilded Cage: Indian Autocracy and the Slow Death of World Cricket

Cricket today is no longer governed; it is managed, monetized, and manipulated. What was once a multilateral sporting ecosystem has been reduced to a hierarchical order dominated by a single actor: the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). By 2026, the erosion of cricket’s global character is no longer subtle. It is structural, institutional, and deliberate, enabled by an International Cricket Council (ICC) that has surrendered regulatory authority in exchange for commercial survival.

This is not dominance through excellence; it is autocracy through leverage.

Financial Capture: How the ICC Became a Subsidiary

Under the current ICC revenue-sharing model, the BCCI absorbs approximately 38.5% of global cricket revenues. England and Australia, historical pillars of the game, receive around 6% each, while most full members survive on allocations below 5%. Associate nations remain permanently dependent, structurally incapable of closing the gap.

This is not redistribution. It is rent extraction.

India’s control over nearly 80% of global cricket’s commercial value, driven by broadcasting rights, sponsorship concentration, and advertising markets, has allowed the BCCI to convert market size into veto power. The ICC, rather than counterbalancing this asymmetry, has institutionalized it. The result is a governance monoculture in which every major decision, Future Tours Programme scheduling, tournament formats, hosting rights, even leadership appointments, as presumed, requires implicit Indian approval.

Global cricket is no longer planned around sporting equity; it is optimized for Indian television ratings.

The Myth of Neutrality: The Hybrid Model as a Political Weapon

The most glaring manifestation of this imbalance emerged during the 2024–2026 tournament cycle, particularly in the selective application of the so-called “hybrid model.”

For the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy, India refused to travel to Pakistan, citing vaguely defined “security concerns”despite multiple international teams touring Pakistan without incident. The ICC capitulated immediately, relocating India’s matches to the UAE, effectively granting them a de facto home environment.

Yet when other nations raised parallel concerns regarding conditions and fairness during the T20 World Cup, co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka, the same flexibility vanished. Scheduling was structured almost entirely around Indian prime-time viewership, forcing players into brutal heat, compressed recovery windows, and intercontinental travel patterns designed to maximize broadcaster revenue rather than athletic integrity.

Neutrality, it turns out, is available only to India.

Bangladesh’s Defiance: A Rare Breach in the Wall

Against this backdrop of institutional submission, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) unexpectedly emerged as a fault line in the system. The 2026 standoff—sparked by BCCI pressure on IPL franchises to sideline Bangladeshi players, most notably the Mustafizur Rahman episode, exposed how league power is now weaponized to discipline smaller boards.

Bangladesh’s refusal to participate in the T20 World Cup in India was not a tantrum; it was a mirror. India’s own precedent, refusing to travel to Pakistan while demanding accommodation elsewhere, made Bangladesh’s position not only legitimate, but logically unassailable.

When the ICC refused to relocate Bangladesh’s matches to neutral Sri Lanka, despite having done precisely that for India months earlier, it stripped the organization of its last claim to procedural fairness. As Bangladesh’s sports advisor Asif Nazrul noted, the episode confirmed that ICC “justice” is conditional, hierarchical, and transactional.

For once, a board refused to sell the dignity of 200 million supporters in exchange for compliance.

From Big Three to Big One: The Hollowing Out of the Game

What began as the “Big Three” era has collapsed into a “Big One” system. Test cricket is being starved of funding to accommodate an ever-expanding IPL window. Associate nations are kept in a permanent state of dependency, funded just enough to exist, never enough to compete. Competitive balance is treated as a threat, not an objective.

This is not stewardship. It is managed decline.

Cricket, under BCCI-driven governance, is being reshaped into a scripted commercial product where outcomes, venues, and calendars orbit a single national interest. The sport’s global legitimacy is the collateral damage.

India’s dominance is not rooted in superior diplomacy or a coherent vision for cricket’s future. It rests almost entirely on demographic mass and market coercion. By reducing the ICC to an administrative shell, the BCCI has secured short-term profits while accelerating long-term irrelevance outside the Indian market.

The Bangladesh Parallel, and the Moral Inversion

Bangladesh’s objections mirror India’s own stance during the Champions Trophy, yet with greater moral consistency. India not only maintains an openly hostile political narrative toward Bangladesh, but continues to shelter Hasina Wajid, a fugitive convicted by the International Crimes Tribunal, linked to the deaths of over 1,400 Bengalis.

In this context, Bangladesh’s refusal to travel is not merely procedural, it is ethical.

What is truly damning is the spectacle of ICC board members accepting these contradictions without protest. The Champions Trophy was not merely compromised for Pakistan; New Zealand and South Africa paid a tangible sporting price through forced travel that directly impacted their knockout-stage performances. They complied, and were punished for it.

A Game Held Hostage

World cricket today operates inside a gilded cage: lucrative, polished, and fundamentally unfree. Until boards collectively challenge this concentration of power, the erosion will continue, quietly, efficiently, and irreversibly.

The “Gentleman’s Game” is no longer governed by gentlemen. It is governed by a bully with a balance sheet.

And history suggests that no sport survives for long when only one nation’s interests are allowed to matter.

When Cricket Becomes a Border Checkpoint - How India Hijacked Cricket and Turned It into a Tool of Power

Cricket, in South Asia, was never merely a sport. It was a shared language, spoken fluently even when diplomacy failed, even when borders hardened and guns replaced dialogue. That language is now being rewritten, not with runs and wickets, but with political pressure, strategic exclusion, and calculated silence.

The recent removal of Bangladesh fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman from the Indian Premier League (IPL) is not an isolated administrative decision. It is a symptom, perhaps the clearest yet, of how India has transformed cricket from soft power into a blunt geopolitical instrument.

The Incident That Exposed the System

On January 3, BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia told India’s ANI that the board had instructed Kolkata to release Bangladesh pacer Mustafizur Rahman due to “recent developments.” Kolkata complied the same day.

That phrase,“recent developments,i"is deliberately elastic. It is the kind of bureaucratic fog that allows an institution to do something political while pretending it is procedural. No injury was cited as the reason. No sporting logic was publicly offered. The implication, widely understood in Bangladesh and echoed in Indian commentary, was that the decision was tied to the worsening political climate between Bangladesh and India after the fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government in August 2024 and her subsequent refuge in India.

In other words: the bowler was not dropped from a league; he was dropped from a relationship.

How Cricket Becomes a Punishment Tool

In a normal sporting ecosystem, franchise cricket is transactional. Players move across borders because leagues want skill, and players want careers. That is what a global sport looks like when it is allowed to behave like a sport.

South Asia is increasingly different. Here, cricket is mutating into a diplomatic lever, a tool not only for image-making, but also for discipline and punishment. And the country that can do this most effectively is India, because India is not simply a participant in world cricket. India is the market.

The IPL is the richest franchise tournament on earth. India supplies the largest audience. Money flows in one direction so overwhelmingly that many boards and institutions have learned to speak softly around Delhi, not because Delhi is always right, but because Delhi is always rich.

When a sport becomes dependent on a single treasury, neutrality becomes a luxury. And morality becomes negotiable.

The Real Message: “Access Is Conditional”

If Mustafizur can be bought at auction for an enormous fee and then removed on a politically convenient pretext, what does that tell the region?

It tells every neighbouring country and every player that entry into “Indian cricket” is not a sporting matter. It is permission-based. It is conditional. It can be withdrawn, suddenly and publicly, as a signal.

That is why this episode is being read, quite reasonably, as a statement: Indian cricket is not a platform you earn; it is a privilege India grants.

This is not soft power anymore. This is coercive power wrapped in the glamour of sport.

The Domestic Engine Behind the Decision

The ugliness does not stop at institutions. The episode reveals how quickly major cricket decisions can be hijacked by India’s domestic majoritarian ecosystem.

According to the narrative circulating in Bangladesh (and referenced in Indian critiques), hardline Hindu nationalist groups pressured Kolkata not to play Mustafizur and issued threats, including towards the franchise and its owner. The point here is not the theatre of outrage; it is what followed: capitulation.

If administrators and political authorities bend to communal agitation, they do not merely “avoid controversy.” They legitimise intimidation as a method. They teach the region that threats work—and that the boundary line between fan passion and political bullying has dissolved.

A sport that kneels to communal pressure becomes a billboard for communal power.

Security: The Question India Cannot Escape

Bangladesh’s response, banning IPL broadcasts, formally raising concerns with the ICC, and seeking to move World Cup matches out of India, was not just nationalist theatre. It was rooted in a simple, devastating question:

If India cannot ensure the security and dignity of one Bangladeshi cricketer in the IPL, what guarantee exists for an entire team, management, journalists, and travelling supporters during a World Cup?

Bangladesh’s position, as stated in your text, is that ICC’s security assessment acknowledged specific risks. Whether the ICC ultimately shifts venues or not, the damage is already done: India’s credibility as a “safe, neutral host” has been dragged into the political mud—largely by India’s own domestic climate and the BCCI’s own choices.

The Pattern Is Familiar: Pakistan Was the Prototype

For years, India’s relationship with Pakistan has shown what happens when cricket is treated as a geopolitical theatre. Tournaments get “hybrid models.” Venues become battlegrounds. Symbolic gestures, handshakes, photo-ops, and trophy presentations become diplomatic statements.

Your text cites an Asia Cup example where India’s objections drove venue arrangements and where symbolic refusals intensified controversy. The details of any specific incident can be debated, but the pattern is unmistakable: India increasingly behaves as though tournaments are not mutually governed events but negotiated spaces where Indian preference becomes de facto policy.

The problem is not that India has interests. Every country does. The problem is that India’s interests, backed by unmatched financial weight, frequently become everyone else’s reality.

What Was Lost: Cricket as a Bridge

South Asia once had a different idea of cricket—a rare shared language that could survive when everything else broke down. The 2004 India tour of Pakistan is often remembered as the high watermark: “friendship series,” leaders speaking of winning hearts, fans travelling under special arrangements. Even after Mumbai 2008, cricket diplomacy returned in flashes, like the 2011 World Cup semifinal attended by both prime ministers.

Those moments mattered because they suggested something larger: that sport could force adversaries to sit, to look, to breathe the same air.

The Mustafizur episode moves in the opposite direction. It says: we can keep you out, and we can do it with a smile, and the world will accept it because our money runs the sport.

That is a terrifying precedent.

India’s Cricket Empire and the ICC Problem

The uncomfortable truth is that the ICC, structurally, is not built to resist India. When one board dominates revenue, the regulator becomes psychologically captured, less a referee than a manager of the dominant player’s satisfaction.

Your text also points to the wider perception of institutional proximity between Indian political power and cricket governance. Even if one avoids personalising the argument, the broader issue stands: when a sport’s global governance is shaped by one country’s money and political climate, it ceases to look global. It begins to look imperial.

And empires rarely tolerate equal neighbours.

Bangladesh’s Defiance and Its Own Test

Bangladesh’s assertive response carries symbolic force. A smaller nation has said: honour first. That matters in a region where small states often learn to swallow insults for access.

But Bangladesh also faces its own test: defiance must become a strategy, not just rhetoric. A bold stance can win a moment; diplomacy must win the decade. If the region is moving toward a future where sport and politics collide openly, Bangladesh will need more than anger; it will need a clear plan: security protocols, negotiation leverage, regional alliances, and economic resilience.

Because India’s greatest advantage is not just nationalism. It is dependent on other dependencies on Indian cricket money, Indian markets, and Indian approvals.

The Verdict: This Is Not Cricket, It’s Control

So, is it still cricket?

Not in the moral sense. Not when a player becomes collateral. Not when “recent developments” becomes a euphemism for political filtration. Not when communal intimidation sets a selection policy. Not when the world’s most powerful board behaves like a state ministry, with franchises and players as its paperwork.

India has every right to be influential. It does not have the right to turn influence into punishment, to treat access like a leash, and to call it normal governance.

Cricket, at its best, is competition with restraint, power disciplined by rules, rivalry contained by ethics. When India weaponises cricket’s economy and domestic political climate to police neighbours, it doesn’t just damage Bangladesh. It damages the game’s meaning.

And once a game becomes a visa regime, once it becomes conditional entry, conditional dignity, conditional belonging, then the scoreboard is no longer the point.

The point becomes domination.

Thank You 

Faisal Caesar