New Delhi, India – On January 3, 2026, a single directive from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) quietly ended Bangladesh’s only cricketer Mustafizur Rahman’s Indian Premier League (IPL) season before it even started.
Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), a Kolkata-based professional Twenty20 franchise that plays in the IPL and is owned by Red Chillies Entertainment, which is associated with Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan, has received instructions from the Indian Cricket Board to release the Bangladeshi fast bowler.
This is not due to injuries, form or contract disputes, but due to “all developments in the situation”, an apparent reference to the escalating tensions between India and Bangladesh since ousted former Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina went into exile in New Delhi in August 2024.
Within days, Mustafizur registered with the Pakistan Super League (PSL), the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) protested violently, IPL broadcasts were banned in Bangladesh, and the sport’s global governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC), was thrown into a diplomatic standoff.
What was supposed to be a routine transaction between players became emblematic of how cricket in South Asia has transformed from an instrument of diplomacy to an instrument of political pressure.
Cricket has long been the subcontinent’s soft power language, a common obsession that has survived wars, border closures and diplomatic freezes. Today, observers and analysts say, that language is being rewritten.
India, the financial and political center of world cricket, is increasingly using its sporting dominance to signal, punish and coerce its neighbors, particularly Pakistan and Bangladesh, they say.
The Mustafizur incident: When politics entered the dressing room
Rahman signed with KKR for 9.2 million Indian rupees ($1 million) ahead of the 2026 IPL season.
However, the BCCI directed the team to release him, citing vague external circumstances that are widely understood to be related to political tensions between India and Bangladesh.
The results were immediate.
Although Mustafizur is unlikely to receive any compensation as his dismissal was not due to injury, he accepted an offer from the PSL and, after receiving scorn from the Indians, opted for the Pakistan League, making his return to the tournament for the first time in eight years.
The PSL confirmed his participation before the draft on January 21st. Meanwhile, the BCB criticized BCCI’s intervention, calling it “discriminatory and insulting”.
Dhaka has escalated the issue beyond cricket, asking the ICC to move Bangladesh’s matches from the T20 World Cup, which is primarily hosted by India, to Sri Lanka, citing safety concerns.
The Bangladeshi government went further by banning national broadcasts of the IPL, an unusual move that highlights how deeply intertwined cricket is with politics and national sentiment in South Asia.
BCB announced on January 7 that the International Cricket Council (ICC) has guaranteed Bangladesh’s full and uninterrupted participation in the 2026 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, dismissing media reports regarding the ultimatum.
The BCB said the ICC has responded to concerns about the national team’s safety and security in India, including requests to relocate matches, and reaffirmed its commitment to safeguard Bangladesh’s participation, while expressing its willingness to work closely with the Board in developing a detailed security plan.
But for now, amid rising tensions, Bangladesh’s matches are scheduled from February 7, 2026, in India’s major cities Kolkata and Mumbai.
BJP leader Navneet Rana said Bangladeshi cricketers and celebrities should not be “entertained in India” while Hindus and minorities are being targeted in Bangladesh.
Meanwhile, Indian Congress leader Shashi Tharoor questioned the decision to release Mustafizur Rahman and warned against politicizing sports and punishing individual athletes based on what other countries are doing.
A pattern, not an exception
The Mustafizur controversy fits into a broader trajectory.
Analysts say that while all cricket boards operate within political realities, the BCCI’s unique financial muscle gives it influence unmatched by any other body in the sport.
The sport’s global body, the ICC, is chaired by Jay Shah, the son of India’s powerful home minister Amit Shah, who is widely regarded as the country’s second most powerful man after Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On the other hand, IPL is the richest franchise league in the world.
India, with a population of 1.5 billion, is cricket’s largest market and generates an estimated 80% of the game’s revenue.
All of this will give India the ability to shape the schedule, venues and revenue-sharing arrangements for events and matches, analysts said. This made cricket a strategic asset for the Indian government.
As political relations deteriorate, cricket can no longer be isolated.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the relationship between India and Bangladesh at the moment. India has historically been seen as close to Hasina, who was ousted in 2024 after weeks of popular protests that security forces tried to crush with brutal force. The crackdown has left an estimated 1,400 people dead, according to the United Nations.
India has so far refused to repatriate Hasina from exile to Bangladesh. This is despite a Dhaka court sentencing Hasina to death in late 2025 for the killing of protesters during the riots that led to her ouster. This stoked anti-India sentiments on the streets of Bangladesh, which further escalated after the assassination of an anti-India protest leader in December.
Meanwhile, attacks on Hindus and other religious minorities in Bangladesh since August 2024 (a Hindu Bangladeshi man was lynched last month) have sparked outrage in India.
Against this backdrop, BCCI’s move to kick Rahman out of the IPL has drawn criticism from Indian commentators. Senior journalist Vir Sanghvi wrote in a column that the cricket board had “panicked”, not supported its own player selection process, caved to public pressure and turned a sporting issue into a diplomatic embarrassment.
He insisted that Bangladesh was not justified in boycotting the sport and warned that mixing cricket with communal politics risks undermining India’s credibility and regional ties.
Suhasini Haidar, the foreign affairs editor of The Hindu, one of India’s largest dailies, echoed this concern, writing in X that the government is allowing social media campaigns to overwhelm diplomacy. She mentioned Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar’s recent visit to Dhaka to attend the funeral of former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, and wondered why Bangladeshi cricketers cannot play in India.
Cricket analyst Dharminder Joshi said the episode reflected how cricket, which was once a bridge between India and its neighbors, is increasingly divisive.
That was especially true late last year when India and Pakistan faced off in a cricket match months after a four-day intense dogfight.
asia cup showdown
The 2025 Asia Cup, to be hosted by Pakistan in September, was supposed to be a regional cricket extravaganza.
However, citing government advice, the BCCI informed the ICC and the sport’s continental governing body, the Asian Cricket Council (ACC), that India would not travel to Pakistan.
After months of controversy, the tournament was held under a hybrid model, with India playing matches in the United Arab Emirates and the remaining matches in Pakistan.
However, in the three matches played between the South Asian rivals during the tournament, India won all three matches, but the Indian team refused to shake hands with the Pakistani team in public.
“There is no rule in cricket that requires a handshake. Yet players often tie each other’s shoelaces or help their opponents on the field. That is the spirit of the game,” Joshi, a cricket analyst, told Al Jazeera. “Would players even refuse such a gesture if the country was in a state of conflict? Incidents like this only spread hatred and strip the game of its specialness.
“Sporting exchanges used to ease tensions between the two countries, but this decision has done just the opposite, making the games more hostile instead of more interesting.”
The controversy didn’t end with the final. India won the tournament by defeating Pakistan, but refused to accept the trophy from ACC chairman Mohsin Naqvi, who is also Pakistan Cricket Board chairman and Pakistan’s interior minister.
The trophy remains at the ACC headquarters in Dubai, creating an unprecedented impasse that has defied resolution despite multiple meetings between the ICC and ACC. BCCI has requested that the trophy be sent to India. Naqvi refused.
From the bridge to the watershed
Unlike Pakistan, Bangladesh has historically had a smoother cricketing relationship with India. The bilateral series continued despite political differences and Bangladeshi players became familiar faces in the IPL.
The Mustafizur episode marks a turning point. The current situation is in stark contrast to earlier days when cricket was used deliberately to defuse political rivalries.
The most famous example is India’s 2004 tour of Pakistan, the so-called “Friendship Series.”
The tour comes after several years of cooling ties following the Kargil War, an armed conflict between India and Pakistan that lasted from May to July 1999.
Before their departure, then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee met the Indian team in person and handed captain Sourav Ganguly a bat inscribed with the Hindi phrase “Kher hi nahi, dil bi jeetie” (meaning “Don’t just win games, win hearts”).
Special cricket visas have allowed thousands of Indian fans to travel across the border. Pakistan’s then president, Pervez Musharraf, watched the match and publicly praised the Indian cricketer for growing a following in Pakistan.
The 2008 Mumbai attacks, carried out by militants that Pakistan recognized as coming from its territory, froze cricket relations.
But in 2011, when India and Pakistan met in the World Cup semi-finals in Mohali, then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh invited Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to watch the match together, which was widely seen as part of “cricket diplomacy”.
By intervening in franchise-level contracts and linking them, albeit in a roundabout way, to geopolitical tensions, as happened with the Mustafizur scandal, the BCCI has sent a clear message, analysts say, that “access to Indian cricket is conditional.”
Sports journalist Nishant Kapoor told Al Jazeera that releasing contracted players purely for political reasons was “absolutely wrong” and warned that it would spread mistrust in the cricket ecosystem.
“He is a cricketer. What bad thing did he do?” Mr. Kapoor said.
