The men’s Twenty20 World Cup gets underway in India and Sri Lanka next month, but the cricket tournament is exposing tensions between nations on the Indian subcontinent.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) said on Sunday its side will not play in India due to concerns over player safety. Bangladesh is scheduled to play all four group games in India, but the BCB cited growing safety and security concerns as its reason for refusing to play there, and said it has “formally requested” to the International Cricket Council (ICC), which organises the competition, to move its team’s matches to another country.
Bangladesh government advisor Asif Nazrul said this week, as reported by the national press agency BSS: “It has become impossible for Bangladesh to play cricket in India.”
All of Pakistan’s games, meanwhile, have already been scheduled in Sri Lanka due to its strained political relations with India.
Pakistan’s most recent tour of India was in 2007, and the teams have not staged a series against each other since. Pakistan did play in the 2023 World Cup, hosted in India. However, India refused to play in Pakistan when it hosted the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy, following the Pahalgam terror attack earlier that year in which 26 people were killed.
Bangladesh and India, along with Pakistan, form the Indian subcontinent — home to approximately 23 per cent of the world’s population.
India and Pakistan gained independence from British rule in 1947. The partition of British India created two separate nations: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan.
Pakistan was split into West Pakistan and East Pakistan (divided by over 1,000 miles of Indian territory), with the latter winning independence as Bangladesh in 1971.
Why are India-Bangladesh relations worsening?
There is a tense leadership vacuum in Bangladesh since its authoritarian, long-serving prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, was toppled in student-led protests in the summer of 2024. Bangladesh has since had an interim government, with a general election scheduled for February.
In November, a Bangladesh court convicted Hasina of crimes against humanity. She was sentenced to death. India, where Hasina fled in the aftermath of the protests, has not responded to calls for her extradition. India is a staunch ally of Hasina.
After the fall of Hasina, a series of killings and arson attacks were reported in Bangladesh against Hindus and other religious minorities. There are approximately 13.1 million Hindus in Bangladesh, accounting for 7.95 per cent of the nation’s 165 million-strong population, as per the Bangladesh census. Hinduism is Bangladesh’s second-largest religion behind Islam.
On December 18, Dipu Chandra Das, a 27-year-old Hindu garment worker in Bangladesh, was beaten, hanged from a tree, and burned alive in a mob lynching.
Bangladesh’s interim government has condemned the violence as part of a larger security struggle and not as something targeted against any section of the population. India’s Ministry of External Affairs also condemned the lynching.
How is this impacting the T20 World Cup?
Bangladesh, who are in Group C of next month’s tournament, are scheduled to play West Indies, Italy, and England in Kolkata before concluding their group stage against Nepal in Mumbai.
However, a BCB statement, via Reuters, last week referenced “the growing concerns regarding the safety and security of the Bangladesh contingent in India” and said, following “advice from the Bangladesh government”, it would not travel to India “under the current conditions”.
The statement added that the BCB has requested that the ICC relocate Bangladesh’s matches outside India “to safeguard the safety and well-being of Bangladeshi players, team officials, board members and other stakeholders.”
Nazrul, speaking on behalf of Bangladesh’s government, said the nation’s cricket team could not play in India due to the nation’s “prevailing extreme communal situation”, which included a “continuous anti-Bangladesh campaign” that he said dated back 16 months.
“We believe that no one should have a monopoly on the game of cricket,” Nazrul added. “The fate of a game cannot be determined based on market management. If the ICC is truly a global organisation, then it should give us the opportunity to play in the T20 World Cup in Sri Lanka. We’ll not accept any concession in this regard.”
If Bangladesh refuse to play and if its request to move matches to Sri Lanka is not granted by the ICC, it will likely be removed from the World Cup.
Bangladesh qualified for the tournament as one of the top seven finishers, not including India as hosts, in the previous T20 World Cup.
Qatar could replace it in the finals, having narrowly missed out on qualification after finishing fourth in the six-team ‘Super 6’ regional qualification finals group, in which the top three nations advanced.
Scotland is the highest-ranked (14th) T20 nation that did not qualify for the World Cup, while Kuwait (23rd) is the highest-ranked Asian team not to qualify.
Scotland could benefit if Bangladesh pulls out or is removed from the World Cup (Ewan Bootman/Getty Images)
Speaking to Business-Standard.com, BCB’s finance committee chairman Najmul Hossain said that the governing body of Bangladesh cricket would not suffer any financial loss if they do not play in the upcoming tournament, but the players will miss out on match fees.
The Athletic has approached the BCB, ICC and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) for comment.
What else has happened?
On January 5, Bangladesh’s interim government instructed the nation’s broadcasters not to air the upcoming Indian Premier League (IPL), the world’s biggest domestic T20 cricket tournament, per the Times of Bangladesh.
The government’s message said this was a direct response to Bangladeshi pace bowler Mustafizur Rahman being released by the IPL franchise Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR). Rahman, the only Bangladesh player bought in the IPL auction for the upcoming campaign, was signed by KKR for the 2026 season, which starts in March.
KKR said in a statement on January 3 that the player had been released following the “instruction of the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI)”. BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia said, via south Asian news agency ANI, that “recent developments” were the reason behind his organisation’s decision on Mustafizur.
Mustafizur will not participate in this year’s men’s IPL (Munir Uz Zaman / AFP via Getty Images)
Rahman, a 30-year-old fast bowler, is the all-time leading wicket-taker for his nation in T20 cricket and has played regularly for Bangladesh across all formats of the game.
“No reasonable justification for such a decision is known,” read the Bangladesh government notification, signed by the ministry’s assistant secretary, Firoz Khan, regarding Rahman’s exit. “Such a decision has hurt, distressed and angered the people of Bangladesh.”
Bangladeshi government advisor Nazrul said that Rahman’s release by KKR was why Bangladesh could no longer play in India. “The board said that where a Bangladesh cricketer can’t play in India despite being contracted, the entire Bangladesh cricket team can’t feel safe to go to the World Cup,” Nazrul posted.
What about India and Pakistan?
The Partition of India in 1947 separated the Hindu-majority India and the Muslim-majority Pakistan.
The Pahalgam attack saw 26 civilians killed by at least three armed Islamist terrorists in India’s Jammu and Kashmir — a disputed region that India and Pakistan have fought over since their independence. Kashmir is India’s only Muslim-majority state. That attack was the deadliest on civilians in India since the Mumbai attacks in 2008, in which more than 160 people were killed.
In cricket, India and Pakistan currently do not meet in bilateral series, and instead only feature together in multi-team global events. For this year’s T20 World Cup, any knockout matches involving Pakistan will be played in Sri Lanka rather than co-hosts India.
Pakistan hosted the 2025 ICC Champions Trophy, but all of India’s matches were played in Dubai due to India’s refusal to play in Pakistan.
What next?
Either Bangladesh will relent, or the ICC must decide whether to move its matches away from India. If the ICC decides not to do this, the BCB may remove its team from the tournament. In this scenario, the ICC would then decide whether to replace Bangladesh with another team, or null-and-void their scheduled matches.
The Indian men’s cricket team is scheduled to tour Bangladesh in September.
The nations are due to play three One Day International (ODI) games between September 1-6, before three T20 Internationals from September 9-13.
The series had originally been scheduled for August 2025, but was delayed by a year due to international scheduling. It is not yet clear whether this series will take place.