By Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has thrown his government’s full weight behind a decision to prevent the national men’s cricket team from facing India in the upcoming T20 World Cup, framing the move as a show of solidarity with Bangladesh amid simmering regional tensions.
The announcement, which has sent shockwaves through the cricketing world, comes as the tournament prepares to get under way in Sri Lanka, with Pakistan’s players cleared to travel but instructed to sit out their high-profile clash against India scheduled for 15 February.
In a federal cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Sharif addressed the controversy head-on, emphasising Pakistan’s long-held position that politics must remain separate from sport. “We have taken this stand after careful consideration and in this regard, we should stand fully with Bangladesh,” he said in remarks broadcast on television. “And I believe this is a very reasonable decision.”
The boycott stems from a chain of events that began last week when the government used the social media platform X to confirm the team’s participation in the World Cup, while explicitly ruling out any encounter with India. The decision followed sharp criticism from Mohsin Naqvi, chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), who accused the International Cricket Council (ICC) of unfairly substituting Bangladesh with Scotland in the lineup.
Bangladesh had withdrawn its team from travelling to India, citing serious security concerns – a move that prompted the ICC to reshuffle the tournament. Pakistan has pointed the finger at India for exerting undue influence over the global governing body, which is currently chaired by Jay Shah. Shah, who also heads the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), is the son of India’s home minister, Amit Shah, adding a layer of political intrigue to the allegations.
The fallout has ignited a media storm across the globe, particularly in India, where cricket pundits and analysts have lambasted Islamabad’s stance. Matches between India and Pakistan are the crown jewels of any ICC event, drawing massive audiences and generating enormous revenue. Since 2012, the ICC has deliberately placed the two Asian powerhouses in the same group to maximise the appeal of these blockbuster fixtures. Yet bilateral cricket ties between the neighbours have been frozen since 2013, a casualty of entrenched political hostilities.
In recent years, their encounters have been confined to neutral venues, a fragile arrangement that underscores the fragility of sporting relations in the region. These strains trace back to decades of conflict, including the intense border clashes of 1999. Tensions escalated dramatically in May 2025, when an attack in Indian-occupied Kashmir claimed the lives of several tourists. India swiftly attributed the incident to Pakistan, sparking the most severe military exchanges between the nuclear-armed rivals in over two decades. Pakistan rejected the accusations outright, demanding an independent and credible investigation into the episode.
With the T20 World Cup just days away, Pakistan’s boycott has stirred up a hornet’s nest in South Asian sport, forcing everyone from fans to administrators to confront how deeply politics infiltrates the game. For the Green Shirts, skipping the India fixture isn’t merely walking away from a big game – it’s a deliberate gesture of support for Bangladesh that Sharif has made crystal clear he backs. Now, all eyes are on the ICC to see if it slaps down penalties or if this spat just widens the cracks already splitting international cricket apart.
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