The 2026 T20 World Cup Boycott-gate turned out to be a damp squib.
Much ado about nothing
It all started with the BCCI instructing the Kolkata Knight Riders to release Mustafizur Rahman. The BCB responded by refusing to tour India for the T20 World Cup. Negotiations followed. When the BCB did not budge from their stance, the ICC replaced Bangladesh with Scotland.
After a frantic course of events (or non-events, depending on your perspective), the world knows exactly what they knew on February 1: India and Pakistan will clash at Colombo on February 15.
In the interim period, the Pakistan government wanted their team to play the World Cup but not the India match. The media and the fans reached uncharted territory, for there was no official reason for this boycott. Playing Conditions (2024 edition’s – for the 2026 version is not out yet, and the World Cup has started) were looked up and dissected.
As theories and rumours did the rounds, the captains were naturally asked the relevant questions. Salman Ali Agha made it clear that it was not his decision to take. Suryakumar Yadav confirmed that the India squad would travel to Colombo (they had to be present even for the walkover).
Then, Pakistan and India – in that order – survived scares against their respective oppositions to eventually get their two points. And everyone continued to wait for something fruitful as the men in suits met behind closed doors. Over this period, the only concrete bit of news to emerge was of the Sri Lanka Police not being notified of the cancellation of a game that demanded top security.
Then, on the night of February 9, several incidents took place over a very short span of time.
First came two assurances from the ICC, both in Bangladesh’s favour. One, there would not be any “financial., sporting, or administrative penalty” for withdrawing from the World Cup (though there was no mention of the BCB getting the money allocated to them for the tournament). And two, they were assured of hosting an ICC event between 2028 and 2031.
By this point, a BCB press release – where Aminul Islam sounded quite emotional – had been doing the rounds. That soon became public on the board’s official social media handles, and a grateful BCB now requested the PCB to go ahead with the clash.
By then, the Sri Lankan president had already thanked the Pakistan prime minister, adding that he was “delighted that the eagerly awaited India and Pakistan match at the ongoing T20 Cricket World Cup in Colombo will proceed as planned”.
Sure enough, the ICC soon confirmed that that match was, indeed, happening.
It is not clear what was discussed at the meeting in Lahore, but one can assume that the decisions involving the BCB were an outcome of it. However, there had been reports (neither the PCB nor the ICC mentioned these) of the PCB putting forward a longer list of conditions. Subsequent reports added that none of these were accepted. The ICC’s release did not mention any PCB clause either.
What, then, did the PCB gain out of the whole affair? What did anyone gain, for that matter?
If everyone won, who lost?
Pakistan will be playing. That should make the ICC and the broadcasters happy. That should make the BCCI happy as well, for they did not have to budge an inch (what were the demands anyway?).
The PCB did budge, but they can come out of the entire episode on moral high grounds of having assisted Bangladesh. The BCB will be happy themselves, for not being penalised and earning hosting rights for a tournament. And SLC are getting their big-ticket game as well.
What did emerge out of everything was that even in a World Cup, India-Pakistan is not only the most high-profile game, but it is big enough for one team to get the ICC to fly out to negotiate. They are unlikely to do the same for India-Sri Lanka or Pakistan-Bangladesh or even Australia-England. There is a reason the ACC designs the Asia Cup to maximise India-Pakistan clashes, and organises every possible variant of the Asia Cup every year.
The PCB did not achieve anything per se. But by disrupting a World Cup, they exposed the ICC’s vulnerability: by holding one game at ransom, they exposed the brittle economics of international cricket.
Does India-Pakistan need to be this big?
As Rahul Iyer eloquently mentioned in these pages, a World Cup need not be centralised around one match. There used to be a time when marquee clashes were rare in the early stages, but not anymore. If the Associates had hinted at leveling the ground in 2024, they are at the centre of the action in 2026.
The tournament opened with Pakistan and India being potentially saved when Max O’Dowd and Shubham Ranjane dropped catches. Yet, the spirited bowling displays from the Netherlands and the USA were forgotten the next day, when Nepal demonstrated a brand of cricket that was as exciting as it was efficient against England.
For more than a century, cricket has hesitated to expand, to look beyond the comfort zone of big-ticket games. Few things emphasise this more than Test cricket, where the Big Three play long series with each other and shorter ones with others; six others play even shorter series; three Full Members have been left out of four WTC cycles; and the rest of the world are expected to “earn their status”. And we are not even getting into the token existence of the women’s Tests.
The ICC did little wrong this time. They did give in to Bangladesh’s late demands and they handled the uncertainty over the India-Pakistan clash. At the same time, the chink in their seemingly invincible armour lay threadbare. A dangerous precedent of a board holding a big-ticket match to ransom has already been set.
The ICC can continue to put all eggs in one basket (fine, maybe two or three baskets), as they have been doing all these years – and allow the boards to call the shots. Or it can – for a change – think long-term, backing the expansion of the sport to diminish the importance of one or more boards.
