Pakistan-India rivalry risks ‘tit-for-tat’ cricket boycotts of Asia Cup, World Cup tournaments
- India’s refusal to send its national team to Pakistan on security grounds has sparked concerns about the pair’s ‘politicisation’ of cricket
- As the game’s most lucrative market by far, India could decide to ‘force its position’, an analyst notes – potentially splintering the sport
International cricket team tours of Pakistan remained suspended on security grounds until after the army defeated the insurgents in 2015.
All touring sides have since been accorded the same levels of protection as visiting presidents and prime ministers so as to ensure their safety.
Yogesh Gupta, a former Indian ambassador, said Pakistan’s “adversarial relationship with India and hence India’s security concerns are very different than those of the UK or Australia”.
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Gupta said the increasing number of terrorist incidents in Pakistan “now indicates that the Pakistan government is unable to control various terrorist groups operating in the country”, Gupta said.
“In this situation, it is not considered safe by India to send its cricket team to play matches in Pakistan.”
But Abdul Basit, a research fellow AT the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, argued that India’s security concerns were “not legitimate or justified”.
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“Pakistan is as safe for India as it is for England, Australia or any other country. The security arrangements are world class,” he said.
While security threats obviously remained, he said Pakistan’s security regimen for visiting international teams and dozens of foreign players taking part in the country’s annual T20 franchise league had proved successful.
“The real issue here is the politicisation of sports whereby the Hindu nationalist BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] government of India is trying to isolate Pakistan,” Basit said.
The Pakistan Cricket Board had adopted a retaliatory stance on possible boycotts of the coming Asia Cup and World Cup because of the success of last year’s full-fledged multi- format tours by top English-speaking teams.
“Pakistan is responding in a tit-for-tat manner because its bargaining position has changed considerably,” Basit said.
However, Gupta said India’s decision not to participate in a Pakistan-hosted Asia Cup was the result of “reviews of the security situation in Pakistan and other countries on a continuous basis”, rather than an extension of India’s refusal to play bilateral series with Pakistan since the BJP took power in 2014.
Likewise, whether Pakistan’s national team should participate in the India-hosted one-day World Cup “should logically be based on security concerns, rather than political considerations”, he said.
The Asia Cup was to have been the first multinational tournament hosted by Pakistan since 2008.
In turn, its success would have been an important stepping stone towards Pakistan’s scheduled hosting of the one-day Champions Trophy in November 2025 – its first global tournament since 1987.
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But India has rejected Pakistan’s proposed compromise of hosting four first-round Asia Cup matches, with India’s games and the remainder of the tournament to be played in the UAE. This so-called “hybrid model” had reportedly found no backing from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
“Post-pandemic, cricket needs stability and then growth rather than diatribe and division,” said Simon Chadwick, a professor of sport and geopolitical economy at the SKEMA Business School in Paris.
Bringing the two sides together “is an imperative rather than simply being desirable”, he said, because a Pakistani boycott could trigger “a tit-for-tat reaction by India that might condemn international cricket to years of turbulence”.
“This matter is not just about two nations and one tournament, but about who plays cricket, where they play it, and who exercises power over the sport,” Chadwick said.
As the sport’s most lucrative market by far, sustained by a significant Indian diaspora across the world, India clearly exerted a great deal of influence and “it would be no surprise to see India’s interests prevail in this situation”, he said.
“The danger cricket potentially faces if Indian demands are not addressed is that the game could splinter, as Indian power is such that it can force its position,” Chadwick said.
The Asian Cricket Council is expected to meet in Dubai sometime this week to make its final decision on the hosting of the Asia Cup.
