That’s not cricket: How ‘creeping Hindutva’ stumped sportsmanship ahead of the T20 World Cup

In 1993, a rising star kicked off a legendary Bollywood career with back-to-back megahits in Darr and Baazigar, where he introduced audiences to the concept of the ‘anti-hero’. Thirty-three years later, it led to Bangladesh being expelled from a World Cup.

If this paragraph makes no sense to you, there are some crucial details that need to be unpacked to make this connection clear. But at the heart of this story is one disturbing new reality — international cricket today has become a tool of India’s ruling Hindutva regime.

From Mustafizur’s ouster to Bangladesh’s expulsion

Let’s begin with the basic details.

On January 2, a member of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Sangeet Som, attacked India’s most popular Muslim figure, Shahrukh Khan, calling him a traitor. Shahrukh owns the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), a cricket franchise of the Indian Premier League that had selected Bangladesh cricketer Mustafizur Rahman. Threatening Mustafizur with “dire consequences” and claiming Shahrukh had “no right to live” in India, Som’s calls led to a chorus of hatred against Shahrukh and Mustafizur.

Within days, the Indian cricket board, the BCCI “requested” KKR to release the player, vaguely citing “recent developments going on all across”.

Almost immediately, Bangladesh’s Sports Adviser Asif Nazrul reacted, ordering the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) to ask the game’s governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), to change the venue of their matches in the upcoming T20 World Cup from India to co-host Sri Lanka. Nazrul noted that “if a Bangladeshi cricketer cannot play in India … then the entire Bangladesh team cannot feel safe travelling to India for the World Cup.”

After several rounds of negotiations between the BCB and the ICC, the latter responded firmly, rejecting Bangladesh’s request and stating that doing so “could set a precedent that would jeopardise the sanctity of future ICC events and undermine its neutrality as a global governing body”. The apex body kicked Bangladesh out of the tournament and replaced them with Scotland.

In response to that, Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) Chairman Mohsin Naqvi vocally opposed the decision, decrying the ICC’s “double standards.” A few days later, the Government of Pakistan instructed its team to boycott its World Cup game against India.

‘Ocean of vagueness’

So how is all of this related to India’s ruling Hindutva regime?

For starters, Sangeet Som’s allegations and threats against Shahrukh and Mustafizur were part of the BJP’s standard dog-whistle, anti-Muslim tactics. These particular ones came as part of campaigning for the West Bengal state elections, where KKR play and where the BJP has called for the expulsion of local Muslims by claiming they are Bangladeshi refugees, amongst other bigoted claims.

This has not been the first time that Shahrukh Khan in particular has come under the religiofascist BJP’s crosshairs. His decades-long megastardom has meant that the BJP has repeatedly sought to target him as the most iconic Muslim figure in Indian society.

What was unprecedented however was when the BCCI stepped in and ‘requested’ KKR to remove the player. Journalists in both India and Bangladesh noted that there were no indications of any internal discussion or debate within the BCCI before the decision was taken.

According to a report in The Indian Express, the decision was taken at the highest level in the board, with neither board members nor the league’s governing council involved. An unnamed BCCI official told the paper that “we ourselves got to know about this through the media. There was no discussion. No suggestion was taken from our side.”

The BCCI’s request to KKR was also deliberately vague, avoiding any specifics of the toxic demands that led to the situation, which later allowed the ICC to reject BCB’s claims of security concerns.

According to veteran Indian cricket journalist Sharda Ugra, this “ocean of vagueness” is a deliberate feature of the Indian board’s recent actions. She noted that despite her best efforts, she never managed to get any formal response on which officials ordered the Indian team to refuse shaking hands with their Pakistani counterparts in the Asia Cup 2025.

Similarly, when the Indian team refused to travel to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy last year, Ugra said that “there [was] no specific instruction from anyone, no clear cut statement saying … that we have been instructed by the external affairs ministry or the home ministry or the foreign ministry or the prime minister’s office — nothing.”

The same process seems to have been followed in Mustafizur’s case. As Ugra noted, “There is no evidence of any paperwork, [or] procedure … there’s no document that says … this guy cannot have a contract [or] he’s in danger. No official government warnings. It is just whisperings. That’s all that it seems to have come from.”

The question of revenue

But if the BCCI is compromised by India’s ruling party, then the ICC is no different. It is currently run by Jay Shah, the son of Amit Shah, India’s Home Minister and the second-most important figure in the ruling regime after Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As such, its announcement expelling Bangladesh came to be seen as particularly hypocritical, given it had happily conceded to demands to move venues from India for the Champions Trophy in Pakistan.

As journalist Taha Hashim wrote in The Guardian, the ICC’s claim about protecting the “sanctity of future … events is a particularly tragicomic line [given that their] Champions Trophy decision did ‘set a precedent’, forming a hybrid model that has already turned ICC tournaments into a joke.”

PCB Chairman Mohsin Naqvi was the only dissenting voice from other cricket boards, terming the ICC’s actions regarding Bangladesh “double standards” and an “injustice” to the South Asian team, as well as promising action in solidarity. But while it does appear that the fallout with Bangladesh might give Naqvi and the PCB another ally, senior Bangladeshi cricket journalist Mohammad Isam is cautious about such a possibility.

Noting the political reality of Bangladesh being surrounded by India on three sides as well as the longstanding cultural links with Bangla-speakers across the border, he said that the options for Bangladeshi cricket were more limited. He pointed out that the current standoff was driven directly by the sports ministry and a government that is about to go into elections in February.

According to Isam, the expectation amongst observers after Mustafizur’s removal was a diplomatic approach from the board. “[We heard] that the BCB was planning to give a statement that was going to be middle of the ground … because while for this Bangladesh government [opposing] India can be something, but for the cricket board, Indian cricket is the end all. The BCB can’t really afford to fight the BCCI, as one tour from India pays the bills for several years.” Similarly, he mentioned that several voices within Bangladeshi cricket felt that the government’s response had put the ball in India’s court and restricted the BCB’s ability to negotiate a way out.

This fear of lost revenue is the stick that allows India its undue sway over world cricket. While the PCB and Pakistan cricket have spent almost two decades adjusting to and living with a de facto ban from Indian cricket and its riches, none of the smaller boards have the resources or the clout for such a fight. Crucially, the most economically and politically powerful boards have also shown a complete sense of apathy on this matter.

Sushant Singh, a lecturer at Yale University, wrote in a blog post that “the Mustafizur moment will not be the last time a player is sacrificed at the altar of majoritarian politics … The machinery is now in place, tested and proven effective. And no one — not the ICC, not the boards of other cricket nations, not the global media — has demonstrated the will to stop it.”

When asked over an email what would need to happen to resist this tide, he speculated that it “would happen when countries like England and Australia are targeted. That could lead to some kind of a pushback but even then, those boards may decide to lump the humiliation and keep placating the BCCI for the moolah.”

India’s grip on international cricket finances, governance

Sharda Ugra was similarly unmoved by the potential of any opposition from within the ICC or the two most powerful boards after India. “I’ve been following cricket for 30 years,” she said, adding that “I’ve never seen [the ICC] look this bad — they are an unserious organisation. [And] the Australian and English cricket boards are no more than the sidekicks of the big don in our game. There is no capable, mature leadership in the ICC anymore.”

That much maligned ICC leadership appeared to be scrambling in the wake of Pakistan’s decision to solely boycott the game against India — the biggest revenue generator in every tournament. In a statement released before they had even formally been notified of the decision by the PCB itself, the ICC made clear that “it expects the PCB to explore a mutually acceptable resolution”, a much more conciliatory tone than the outright rejection of the BCB’s demands. Clearly, with a huge financial bite to face, the ICC’s priorities have been put to test.

The decisions by Bangladesh and Pakistan have been the first time in a long time that the sport has had to address someone else’s concerns other than India’s.

India’s vice-like grip over both international cricket’s finances as well as its governance has meant that the entire sport has become increasingly beholden to it. And in turn, the Hindutva movement and the BJP’s control over Indian institutions has meant that as Ugra puts it, the BCCI’s actions are now “addressing voting constituencies rather than cricket fans.”

It has meant that the fallout from campaigning in a local state election in India can lead to massive implications for foreign countries and players, potentially crippling the future of the sport. As one Indian observer posted on social media platform X, “this is what happens if you decide to torch your … one genuine soft power currency to please a few. You can draw a straight line from the Mustafizur decision to [the Pakistan government’s] decision.”

Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any quick solution. Writing after the news of Pakistan’s boycott, Sushant Singh said, “[The sport’s] final wicket will fall not to a rival bowler, but to a lawsuit from a broadcaster or the collapse of a commercial deal, leaving the game bankrupt in every sense — financially, morally, and culturally… The only way back is … through accountability.”

Till then, the reality of the sport is that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in local Indian politics can cause a typhoon in another country’s cricketing fortunes.

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