The Indian cricket board last week instructed the Indian Premier League’s Kolkata Knight Riders team to drop Mustafizur Rahman from its squad. It cited “recent developments that are going on all across” but the reason was evident: he is a Bangladeshi.
In response, the interim Bangladeshi government banned the broadcast of the 2026 IPL tournament, saying that no reason had been communicated for excluding Rahman. The Bangladesh Cricket Board on its part declared that its team would not travel to India for the Twenty20 World Cup scheduled to begin in February, citing the purportedly “violent communal policy” of the Indian cricket board.
After the International Cricket Council rejected Bangladesh’s request to play its matches in co-host Sri Lanka (just like Pakistan will do), Dhaka said that it was concerned about the safety of its team in India.
The world cup matches will take place around the time Bangladesh heads for its first national election since the ouster of the Sheikh Hasina government in August 2024. A tense political situation could cause passions on both sides of the border to run high.
The removal of Rahman – the only Bangladeshi picked in the 2026 IPL edition – was not abrupt. It came amid diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Dhaka after the killing of a…
