Pakistan World Cup – Pakistan’s decision to boycott its match against India in the T20 World Cup is political gesturing at its most incoherent. While the move claims solidarity with Bangladesh, it exposes the hollowness of performative activism in cricket — and sets a dangerous precedent for the sport.
The boycott fails even on its own terms. Pakistan will play all their other matches in Sri Lanka, making this selective protest impossible to justify on security grounds.
If safety were the concern, why play in that country? Past boycotts by Australia, New Zealand, England, and the West Indies — of Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, and Kenya in 1996 and 2003—all cited security concerns. Even England’s politically motivated withdrawal from Zimbabwe, which stemmed from Robert Mugabe’s policies, was officially framed as a security issue. Advertisement Pakistan’s one-match boycott reads as what it is: Empty symbolism.
The absurdity deepens when you consider the logistics: What if Pakistan and India both advance and meet in the final? Will Pakistan forfeit the championship match, too? Or will they suddenly discover that playing India is acceptable when a trophy is at stake? Bangladesh’s position, by contrast, had internal logic. When India pressured the Kolkata franchise to de-select Bangladeshi player Mustafizur Rehman from the Indian Premier League, citing safety concerns for a tournament still four months away, Bangladesh had grounds to question how India could then guarantee safety for an entire squad in the immediate future. The ICC compounded the problem by treating the Mustafizur issue as a domestic matter while expecting Bangladesh to participate in an ICC event in the same venue.
Bangladesh’s refusal to play in India, whatever its mix of wounded pride and legitimate grievance, followed a clear cause-and-effect chain. Pakistan’s boycott follows no such logic. Their Under-19 team played India in Zimbabwe, the same day this decision was taken.
Former Pakistan player Basit Ali suggested the sensible alternative: Wear black armbands to register a protest while playing the game. Instead, Pakistan chose theatrical withdrawal — solidarity as spectacle rather than substance. Advertisement This matters beyond one match.
Cricket has never been apolitical — the sport’s very governance structure was designed to reinforce British imperial hierarchy. The Imperial Cricket Conference (now known as the International Cricket Council), founded in 1909, granted veto powers to England, Australia, and (White) South Africa that were used for decades to suppress initiatives from non-white nations. Even the 1933 Bodyline crisis ended only when the British government pressured Australia to back down from their accusations of “unsportsmanlike behaviour of England” to protect bilateral trade.
Politics and cricket have always been inseparable. The question isn’t whether politics belongs in cricket, but how political power is wielded. India, with its massive fan base and financial dominance, has the opportunity to govern the sport more equitably than England and Australia did in their heyday.
Instead, the BCCI’s handling of the Mustafizur case — using commercial leverage to exclude a player from a private league — showed the same impulse toward unilateral control. The ICC’s passive complicity only reinforced the pattern. If India couldn’t stand to have a Bangladeshi player in a Kolkata franchise due to safety, they should have been asked how they were going to have an entire squad of players stay and play a series of games in Kolkata.
If India, in the recent past in the Asia Cup, and Pakistan, now in this World Cup, have been allowed to play elsewhere, Bangladesh could have been accommodated too. But Pakistan’s response doesn’t challenge this power structure — it plays into it.
By boycotting without a coherent justification, they hand ammunition to those who dismiss legitimate grievances about cricket governance as mere political theatrics. They blur the line between principled stands and petulant point-scoring, and are now threading the line of control in the cricketing world. The real victims are the sport and its stakeholders.
Broadcasters have reportedly invested hundreds of millions of dollars, primarily for India-Pakistan fixtures, the most-watched matches in cricket. Without this marquee clash, the tournament loses its commercial centrepiece and viewership magnet. Fans across both nations, already deprived of bilateral series due to decades of political tensions, lose yet another rare opportunity to see their teams compete.
Cricket’s already weak governance framework fractures further, with no clear mechanism to prevent future boycotts. When Pakistan faces sanctions for this boycott — whether points deductions, fines, or future participation restrictions—they’ll have sacrificed commercial relationships with the sport and fan goodwill for a gesture that satisfies no one and achieves nothing.
The mess, ultimately, comes down to adult egos playing politics without strategy. Bangladesh at least had a grievance. Pakistan has only theatre.
No Bangladesh, no India-Pakistan — where is the world in the World Cup? The writer is senior associate editor, The Indian Express. sriram. veera@expressindia.
com.