India, Pakistan, and the ICC: The Champions Trophy Saga

If there was any hope for India normalizing ties with Pakistan after External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar visited Islamabad for the SCO Heads of Government Summit in October, the Indian government’s refusal to send its cricket team to Pakistan for the International Cricket Council (ICC) Champions Trophy has put these expectations to rest.

The fraught political ties between India and Pakistan have spilled into cricket, with both teams avoiding bilateral series against each other. The Indian cricket team has not traveled to Pakistan since the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks in 2008, although the Pakistani team toured India in 2012-13. India has not allowed Pakistani players to play in the Indian Premier League (IPL) since its first season in 2008.

Relations further deteriorated over the past decade, with attacks in Pathankot, Uri, Pulwama, and the subsequent Balakot strike, India’s abrogation of Article 370, and calling for fresh negotiations on the Indus Waters Treaty. However, during these tense periods, both sides continued to play each other in ICC events at neutral venues. After much deliberation at home, Pakistan even decided to participate in the 2023 Cricket World Cup hosted by India, hoping for reciprocal behavior from the latter.

India’s position, however, has been rigid – its team will not play in Pakistan. India refused to play in the 2022 Asia Cup hosted by Pakistan, and after discussions, the tournament was conducted in a hybrid mode to accommodate India’s demand. India’s matches were played in Sri Lanka, whereas the rest were played in Pakistan. This created logistical and economic challenges for Pakistan and unavoidable hurdles for players from other countries who had to travel between Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Now a similar controversy has again emerged. With Pakistan set to host the ICC Champions Trophy in 2025, India is demanding a neutral venue for the tournament. The question for the ICC is whether it will accommodate India’s demand and deprive Pakistan of its full hosting rights or conduct the tournament in Pakistan without India’s participation.

This, however, is not a straightforward question. India is the largest cricketing market, and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) is the richest cricketing board, contributing around 70 percent to the ICC’s revenue annually. India’s large contribution makes it the most influential cricketing board, and it gets the maximum share of the ICC’s total earnings – 38 percent, close to $230 million annually. Furthermore, the current BCCI secretary, Jay Shah, is the ICC chairman-elect, set to commence his term in December 2024.

Since 2014, India’s ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has made inroads into the BCCI, affecting its functioning and autonomy. All important positions in the BCCI council are held by office bearers connected to the BJP; for example, Jay Shah is the son of India’s Home Minister Amit Shah, who previously served as BJP president. Due to the enormous capital and power enjoined to cricketing boards, its administrators were always linked to the ruling party. The previous government, however, never encroached on the BCCI’s independent status.

Under the BJP, the BCCI has become politicized, saffronized, and centralized in decision-making. Under Jay Shah’s tenure, the BCCI has constantly taken a position consistent with the current government’s foreign and domestic policy. For instance, the preparations for the 2023 World Cup became an extended electoral campaign for the Modi government, occasionally drumming nationalist and jingoistic appeals. Further, the BCCI delayed granting visas to the Pakistani cricket team and journalists and did not grant visas to Pakistani fans. Compare this to 2004, when Jagmohan Dalmiya, then the president of the BCCI, refused to cancel India’s tour of Pakistan unless the government ordered it.

The BJP’s symbolic hold over Indian cricket is most obviously reflected in India’s largest cricket stadium in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. It is named after the current prime minister, Narendra Modi, with the lower tier seats painted orange, a color associated with the BJP and Hindutva groups, visually representing the government’s ideological contours. The two ends of the stadium are named Ambani and Adani, after the leading businessmen who continue to bankroll Modi and gain benefits through government contracts.

Sharda Ugra, the sports journalist, aptly noted, “It is not merely a sports stadium; it is a stage for a wider political project, one in which everything is destroyed and rebuilt in Modi’s image.” This wider project was reflected when Modi separately hosted U.S. President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in this stadium, using cricket’s soft power to project his global appeal to the domestic audience.

Under the BJP, cricket has become a site for contesting national identities through symbolic changes and jingoistic messaging. One of the first instances of collusion between the government’s ideology and cricket was witnessed in February 2019 when the Indian team took the field against Australia wearing camouflage caps after the suicide bombing on a military convoy in Jammu and Kashmir, making it the first team in the history of modern cricket to wear a military symbol. This event further emboldened the government’s jingoistic appeals prevailing on anti-Pakistan sentiments.

The government attempted to cash in on these nationalist sentiments in the India-Pakistan in the World Cup at the Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad. It tried to switch the kit color of the Indian cricket team to orange, symbolically signifying a match between “Hindu” India and “Muslim” Pakistan. However, the plan was shelved after team management refused to go with the changes. Moreover, during the match, Pakistani players’ were targeted with objectionable slogans targeting their religion and taunted with chants of “Jai Shree Ram” – usually a form of greeting, but in recent years used as a militant slogan for Hindu nationalists.

While India has refused to play bilateral or ICC events in Pakistan, it continues to play Pakistan in neutral venues. India has never approached the ICC to make an exception of not drawing India and Pakistan into the same pools. This half-hearted position of refusing to play in Pakistan but agreeing to play against it is driven by the logic of capital and nationalism. Under the majoritarian, hyper-nationalist BJP government, this rivalry is further symbolized through the metaphors of war by media discourses stoking nationalist sentiments. Additionally, the intense rivalry is also the most sought-after match for the sponsors, generating one of the highest revenues through tickets and advertisements. The need for capital and nationalistic rhetoric foreshadows India’s apprehension of playing against Pakistan.

Adding to the logical inconsistency, other Indian and Pakistani sports teams continue to travel to each other’s country. India’s tennis team traveled to Pakistan to play their round of the Davis Cup, whereas Pakistan’s football and hockey teams have traveled to India. The reason for the difference is clear: India faces consequences for excluding Pakistan in other sports. In 2019, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) briefly suspended India’s hosting rights for global events after the government did not grant visas to Pakistani shooters for a World Cup event. The threat of penalties compels India to follow the dictates of other sporting authorities, allowing its players to travel to Pakistan and vice versa.

However, India’s refusal to play in the ICC tournament in Pakistan and demand for special treatment reflects something rotten in the international body. It brings into question the ICC’s capacity to treat its member states equally. India’s attitude toward the ICC also provides a shadow view of the Modi government’s approach to international organizations. As a self-appointed custodian of the Global South, India has argued for reforms in various multilateral bodies to reflect democratic decision-making and non-discrimination against less powerful members. However, its practices in the organizations where it remains most influential, such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and ICC, belie this normative posturing. While India postures that it will be a different kind of power, its behavior in the multilateral bodies where it holds influences implies otherwise.

Sports and nationalism are intertwined, as athletic events become a symbol for realizing “imagined communities.” George Orwell recognized the political symbolism of sports when he wrote, “Serious sport… is war minus the shooting.” This also exemplifies the government’s position toward the India-Pakistan cricket rivalry.

However, sport is also a site of healing. After the Tutsi genocide in Rwanda, football became a mechanism to rebuild and heal communities. Cricket became a refuge for Afghanistan’s refugees in Pakistan and is now a source of new national identity. States have used sports diplomacy to ease tensions and promote cooperation between them. Playing in Pakistan and allowing Pakistani players in the IPL could become a mechanism to generate people-to-people ties and goodwill. One can only imagine the sheer positive messaging when Indians and Pakistani players playing in the same franchise team puncture the discourse of “inevitable enemies.” However, this also would require the BJP government to abandon its hyper-nationalistic rhetoric and no-dialogue policy with Pakistan. Thus far, the current Indian government refuses to pursue these options.

For Pakistan, a country beset by economic, political, and social turmoil, hosting the ICC Champions Trophy would have provided a sense of respite, rejuvenation, and joy to the public, financial benefits to small enterprises, and a much-needed boost to Pakistan’s cricket infrastructure that has been falling apart in recent years. India’s refusal to travel to Pakistan raises more questions about the efficacy of the ICC than the bilateral tensions between India and Pakistan.

With India’s overpowering influence in the ICC, the question for the international organization is whether it will bend to accommodate the former’s every demand or stand upright to treat all its member states equally. If the ICC shifts the Champions Trophy either to a different country or to hybrid mode, will it accommodate similar demands from Pakistan when India is hosting tournaments? Will India be held accountable for refusing to travel to Pakistan for an ICC tournament, perhaps by seeing the BCCI forego its hosting rights for future tournaments? Any prudent answers to these questions require reforms in the international body requiring cricket boards to function independently of their government and preserving the ICC’s ability to treat each member state equally.