New Delhi, India – On January 3, 2026, a single directive from the Board of Management for Cricket in India (BCCI) quietly ended the Indian Premier League (IPL) season of Bangladesh’s solely cricketer within the match, Mustafizur Rahman, earlier than it may even start.
The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), knowledgeable Twenty20 franchise based mostly in Kolkata that competes within the IPL and is owned by Crimson Chillies Leisure, related to Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, had been instructed by India’s cricket board to launch the Bangladesh quick bowler.
Not due to harm, type, or contract disputes, however resulting from “developments throughout” – an obvious reference to hovering tensions between India and Bangladesh which have been excessive since ousted former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina acquired exile in New Delhi in August 2024.
Inside days, Mustafizur signed up for the Pakistan Tremendous League (PSL), the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) protested sharply, the IPL broadcast was banned in Bangladesh, and the Worldwide Cricket Council (ICC) – the physique that governs the game globally – was pulled right into a diplomatic standoff.
What ought to have been a routine participant transaction as a substitute grew to become a logo of how cricket in South Asia has shifted from a software of diplomacy to an instrument of political stress.
Cricket has lengthy been the subcontinent’s soft-power language, a shared obsession that survived wars, border closures, and diplomatic freezes. At the moment, that language is being rewritten, say observers and analysts.
India, the monetary and political centre of world cricket, is more and more utilizing its dominance of the game to sign, punish, and coerce its neighbours, notably Pakistan and Bangladesh, they are saying.
The Mustafizur affair: When politics entered the dressing room
Rahman was signed by KKR for 9.2 million Indian rupees ($1m) earlier than the IPL 2026 season.
But the BCCI instructed the franchise to launch him, citing obscure exterior developments extensively understood to be linked to political tensions between India and Bangladesh.
The results had been speedy.
Mustafizur, unlikely to obtain compensation as a result of the termination was not injury-related, accepted a proposal from the PSL – selecting the Pakistani league after an Indian snub – returning to the match after eight years.
The PSL confirmed his participation earlier than its January 21 draft. The BCB, in the meantime, known as the BCCI’s intervention “discriminatory and insulting”.
Dhaka escalated the matter past cricket, asking the ICC to maneuver Bangladesh’s matches from the upcoming T20 World Cup, which India is primarily internet hosting, to Sri Lanka over safety issues.
The Bangladeshi authorities went additional, banning the published of the IPL nationwide, a uncommon step that underlined how deeply cricket intersects with politics and public sentiment in South Asia.
The BCB on January 7 mentioned the Worldwide Cricket Council (ICC) has assured it of Bangladesh’s full and uninterrupted participation within the ICC Males’s T20 World Cup 2026, dismissing media studies of any ultimatum.
The BCB mentioned the ICC responded to its issues over the protection and safety of the nationwide staff in India, together with a request to relocate matches, and reaffirmed its dedication to safeguarding Bangladesh’s participation whereas expressing willingness to work intently with the Board throughout detailed safety planning.
But for now, Bangladesh’s matches stay scheduled for the Indian megacities of Kolkata and Mumbai from February 7, 2026, at the same time as tensions simmer.
Navneet Rana, a BJP chief mentioned that no Bangladeshi cricketer or movie star needs to be “entertained in India” whereas Hindus and minorities are being focused in Bangladesh.
In the meantime, Indian Congress chief Shashi Tharoor questioned the choice to launch Mustafizur Rahman, warning in opposition to politicising sport and punishing particular person gamers for developments overseas.
A sample, not an exception
The Mustafizur controversy suits right into a broader trajectory.
Whereas all cricket boards function inside political realities, the BCCI’s distinctive monetary energy offers it leverage unmatched by another physique within the sport, say analysts.
The ICC, the game’s world physique, is headed by Jay Shah, the son of India’s highly effective house minister Amit Shah – extensively seen because the second-most influential man in India after Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The IPL, in the meantime, is by far the richest franchise league on the earth.
India, with 1.5 billion folks, is cricket’s greatest market and generates an estimated 80 % of the game’s income.
All of that, say analysts, offers India the flexibility to form scheduling of occasions and matches, venues, and revenue-sharing preparations. This, in flip, has made cricket a strategic asset for the Indian authorities.
When political relations bitter, cricket is now not insulated.
Nowhere is that this clearer than in India’s relationship with Bangladesh in the meanwhile. India has traditionally been seen as near Hasina, whose ouster in 2024 adopted weeks of in style protests that her safety forces tried to crush utilizing brutal pressure. An estimated 1,400 folks had been killed in that crackdown, based on the United Nations.
India has to date refused to ship Hasina again to Bangladesh from exile, though a tribunal in Dhaka sentenced her to demise in late 2025 over the killings of protesters throughout the rebellion that led to her elimination. That has spurred sentiments in opposition to India on the streets of Bangladesh, which escalated after the assassination of an anti-India protest chief in December.
In the meantime, assaults on Hindus and different spiritual minorities in Bangladesh since August 2024 – a Hindu Bangladeshi man was lynched final month – have brought on anger in India.
In opposition to that backdrop, the BCCI’s transfer to kick Rahman out of the IPL has drawn criticism from Indian commentators. Senior journalist Vir Sanghvi wrote in a column that the cricket board “panicked” and surrendered to communal stress as a substitute of standing by its personal player-selection course of, turning a sporting challenge right into a diplomatic embarrassment.
He argued Bangladesh didn’t warrant a sport boycott and warned that mixing communal politics with cricket dangers damaging India’s credibility and regional ties.
Echoing the priority, Suhasini Haidar, diplomatic editor of The Hindu, considered one of India’s largest dailies, mentioned on X that the federal government was permitting social media campaigns to overpower diplomacy. She referred to how Indian Overseas Minister S Jaishankar had travelled lately to Dhaka to attend the funeral of former Bangladesh PM Khaleda Zia, and puzzled why Bangladeshi cricketers couldn’t then play in India.
Cricket analyst Darminder Joshi mentioned the episode mirrored how cricket, as soon as a bridge between India and its neighbours, was more and more widening divisions.
That was notably seen late final 12 months, when India and Pakistan confronted off in cricket matches months after an intense four-day aerial battle.
The Asia Cup standoff
The 2025 Asia Cup, hosted by Pakistan in September, was meant to be a celebration of regional cricket.
However citing authorities recommendation, the BCCI knowledgeable the ICC and the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) – the game’s continental governing physique – that India wouldn’t journey to Pakistan.
After months of wrangling, the match was held underneath a hybrid mannequin, with India enjoying its matches within the United Arab Emirates whereas the remainder had been hosted in Pakistan.
However in three matches that the South Asian rivals performed in opposition to one another throughout the competitors – India received all three – the Indian staff refused to publicly shake palms with their Pakistani counterparts.
“There is no such thing as a rule in cricket that mandates a handshake. But gamers usually tie one another’s shoelaces or assist opponents on the sector, that’s the spirit of the sport,” Joshi, the cricket analyst, advised Al Jazeera. “If international locations are in battle, will gamers now refuse even these gestures? Such incidents solely unfold hate and strip the sport of what makes it particular.
“Sporting exchanges as soon as softened bilateral tensions; this choice does precisely the other, making the sport extra hostile as a substitute of extra fascinating.”
The controversy didn’t finish with the ultimate. India received the match, defeating Pakistan, however refused to simply accept the trophy from ACC President Mohsin Naqvi, who can also be the Pakistan Cricket Board chairman and Pakistan’s inside minister.
The trophy stays on the ACC headquarters in Dubai, creating an unprecedented limbo that has defied decision regardless of a number of ICC and ACC conferences. The BCCI requested that the trophy be despatched to India. Naqvi has refused.
From bridge to divider
Not like Pakistan, Bangladesh has traditionally loved smoother cricketing ties with India. Bilateral sequence continued even throughout political disagreements, and Bangladeshi gamers grew to become acquainted faces within the IPL.
The Mustafizur episode marks a turning level. The present second stands in stark distinction to earlier eras when cricket was intentionally used to melt political hostilities.
Essentially the most celebrated instance stays India’s 2004 tour of Pakistan, the so-called “Friendship Collection”.
That tour befell after years of frozen ties following the Kargil Struggle, an armed battle between India and Pakistan that befell from Could to July 1999.
The then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee personally met the Indian staff earlier than departure, handing captain Sourav Ganguly a bat inscribed with the Hindi phrases: “Khel hello nahi, dil bhi jeetiye” which interprets to “don’t simply win matches, win hearts too”.
Particular cricket visas allowed 1000’s of Indian followers to journey throughout the border. Pakistani then-President Pervez Musharraf adopted the video games and publicly lauded Indian cricketers who developed followings of their very own in Pakistan.
The 2008 Mumbai assaults, carried out by fighters that Pakistan acknowledged had come from its territory, froze cricketing ties.
However in 2011, when India and Pakistan confronted off within the World Cup semifinal in Mohali, Indian then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited his Pakistani counterpart, Yousuf Raza Gilani, over – the 2 premiers watched the match collectively in what was extensively seen as an act of “cricket diplomacy”.
By intervening in a franchise-level contract and linking it, nonetheless obliquely, to geopolitical tensions as has occurred with the Mustafizur case, the BCCI despatched a transparent message, say analysts: Entry to Indian cricket is conditional.
Sport journalist Nishant Kapoor advised Al Jazeera that releasing a contracted participant purely on political grounds was “completely incorrect” and warned it could widen distrust within the cricketing ecosystem.
“He’s a cricketer. What incorrect has he accomplished?” Kapoor mentioned.
