Zulfiqar Ali Shirazi
International sports have long claimed political neutrality, yet in cricket, the record of International Cricket Council (ICC) events shows that geopolitics, security doctrines, and visa regimes have repeatedly manifested India’s bullying of the cricket world. The history of forfeited matches and forced relocations now shapes how global cricket is being governed.
The first clear forfeitures in an ICC men’s event occurred at the 1996 Cricket World Cup, when Australia and the West Indies refused to travel to Sri Lanka (who went on to win it later) after the Colombo bombing, leading the ICC to award walkovers; a precedent that teams could decline to play and still shape tournament outcomes. A more overtly political precedent followed at the 2003 World Cup, when England refused to play Zimbabwe over objections to the Mugabe regime and New Zealand declined to travel to Kenya, with the ICC again denying relocation and awarding walkovers that proved consequential, particularly in Kenya’s historic semi-final run. In total, four completed match-day forfeits have not been repeated since then. A prospective new precedent emerged in February 2026 when Pakistan announced it would boycott its T20 World Cup match against India, which the ICC has said would amount to a forfeiture if carried through. Since those early episodes, the ICC has largely shifted away from forfeits toward relocation and neutral-venue arrangements to contain political conflict, most notably after the 2009 Lahore attack that led to Pakistan losing its 2011 World Cup matches as host and the relocation of the 2009 Champions Trophy to South Africa on security grounds.
In recent years, relocation has been formalised through hybrid and neutral-venue models, primarily driven by India-Pakistan relations. In December 2024, the ICC formally confirmed that India-Pakistan matches at ICC events in the 2024-27 cycle would be played at neutral venues when hosted by either country. This arrangement placed India’s matches at the 2025 Champions Trophy, officially hosted by Pakistan, in Dubai. The ICC justified the decision as necessary to preserve tournament integrity and broadcaster certainty, but critics immediately pointed to competitive imbalance, noting India’s reduced travel and inconsistent playing conditions for the rest of the participating teams. The bilateral series freeze of over a decade between India and Pakistan, solely driven by India, is another story for another day.
Bangladesh’s case at the 2026 Men’s T20 World Cup represents a confirmed boycott through refusal to travel. Lately, the Bangladesh Cricket Board formally informed the ICC that it would not travel to India for its scheduled fixtures and requested relocation to a neutral venue, citing security and political concerns. The ICC rejected the request after determining there was no verifiable security threat and ruled that the tournament would proceed as scheduled. Following Bangladesh’s refusal to participate under those conditions, the ICC removed Bangladesh from the event and replaced it with Scotland.
The cricket underworld Don, India, also leverages its visa policy as an instrument for coercion. Ahead of the 2023 ODI World Cup in India, Pakistan’s team visas were issued only days before departure, prompting diplomatic complaints and public criticism. Visas were eventually granted, avoiding forfeiture, but the episode demonstrated how administrative delay alone can distort preparation and undermine the spirit of open competition. Similar visa denials have occurred outside cricket: in 2019, the International Olympic Committee publicly urged India to address visa refusals for Pakistani athletes, after players were denied entry for a shooting event. This establishes that visa leverage is a cross-sport phenomenon, not an isolated cricket issue. Reportedly, Pakistani-origin US cricketers were initially denied Indian visas for the 2026 T20 World Cup.
India’s recent conduct has further strained the norms of sportsmanship in international cricket, most visibly through its “no-handshake” policy with Pakistani teams, enforced across men’s and women’s formats. Indian players have repeatedly declined post-match handshakes and, in a notable departure from convention, refused to receive trophies from the PCB’s Chairman, signalling that political hostility now extends into ceremonial and symbolic aspects of the game, thus subordinating basic sporting courtesies to political signalling.
The ICC’s operating logic has become overtly inconsistent, prioritising tournament continuity, broadcast value, and the avoidance of visible security failures over consistent principles. Forfeits are viewed as commercially damaging and are therefore resisted, while relocation and neutral venues are normalised as expedient fixes, despite repeated assurances that cricket should not be held hostage to politics. In practice, this neutrality has not been applied evenly: the ICC has shown greater accommodation for India’s political red lines than for other members, reinforcing perceptions that consistency is contingent on financial power rather than rule-based governance. Expert debate reflects this divide, with one camp arguing that hybrid and neutral-venue models such as India’s Dubai-only schedule at the 2025 Champions Trophy create unfair competitive advantages, while the opposing view maintains that safety and state sovereignty must override sporting symmetry, and that no governing body can compel teams to tour against official security advice.
What remains unresolved are the systemic implications. First, the ICC has only published consequences for refusal, but no single, clear, universally codified threshold that cleanly separates when relocation must happen versus when refusal leads to forfeiture, and that gap is exactly why decisions are vulnerable to accusations of arbitrariness and unequal application. Second, repeated neutralisation risks hollowing out the concept of hosting itself, particularly for countries like Pakistan, which have repeatedly lost marquee fixtures despite formal hosting rights. Third, selective normalisation of boycotts; playing an entire tournament while refusing a single opponent directly challenges fair competition. So, better resolve and evolve.
The future of world cricket depends on whether the ICC can convert ad hoc crisis management into transparent, even-handed rules and, more so, reclaim the ICC from the clutches of BCCI; otherwise, the sport risks drifting toward a managed spectacle where India’s will shall quietly determine who plays where and under what conditions, long before the first ball is bowled. Let us forfeit now to fortify a principled stance.
The writer is a freelance columnist and can be reached at zulfiqar.shirazi @gmail.com
