Cricket as Public Diplomacy

One of the famous arenas where politically conflicted South Asian states compete and come together is cricket. Both Bangladesh and Pakistan have used the code to play politics, nationalism, and to promote an image in the rest of the world. Cricket has been both a peacemaker and a war-maker in Pakistan. The positive effects of “cricket diplomacy” in the 1980s and early 2000s include the sensational visit of General Zia-ul-Haq to Jaipur in 1987 and the “Friendship Series” in 2004 under Prime Ministers Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Rahul Gandhi.

However, in cricket, with the Mumbai terror attack in 2008, there has been a greater emphasis on geopolitical issues. Bangladesh has been a more complicated story with some love for Indian cricket and some bitterness at their dominance, but cricket in the country has not been eliminated either. Bilateral cricket has vanished, and Pakistan continues to be banned from the Indian Premier League (IPL), a testament to how ‘nationalism’ overrules the game. This trend is evident in cricket’s recent politicization.

In early 2026, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) directed the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) franchise of the Indian Premier League (IPL) to release Bangladeshi pacer Mustafizur Rahman on grounds of “developments all around” – code for political pressure between New Delhi and Dhaka in the wake of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s exile in India. Bangladesh retaliated with a ban on IPL broadcasts and threatened to pull out of matches in India. That a player’s contract became a diplomatic issue highlights cricket’s evolution into a geopolitical tool. The Bangladesh Cricket Board’s outcry and its appeals to the International Cricket Council (ICC) were as much public diplomacy as institutional protest – a re-enchantment of a sporting insult into a moral critique of sovereignty and justice.

The Power Politics of the BCCI

The narratives of Pakistan and Bangladesh are part of a broader South Asian hierarchy underpinned by India’s economic........

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