When Politics Pads Up: Cricket, Nationalism and South Asia’s Perpetual Dilemma

In South Asia, cricket has always carried more than bat and ball. It bears the weight of history, partition, wars, fragile diplomacy and unfinished political arguments. Every boundary cheered is also a reminder of shared colonial pasts; every boycott echoes unresolved disputes. Yet even by these standards, the growing chill in cricketing ties between India and Bangladesh marks a disturbing turn one that suggests New Delhi may be extending to Dhaka the same logic of exclusion it has long applied to Pakistan.

At its core, this episode is not simply about postponed tours or a foreign player being dropped from an IPL squad. It is about how politics, nationalism and power intersect in South Asia, and how sport once a rare arena for dialogue   is increasingly becoming collateral damage.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)’s decision to postpone the Indian team’s tour of Bangladesh has already raised eyebrows. More unsettling, however, are reports that Kolkata Knight Riders have been instructed to move away from Bangladeshi pacer Mustafizur Rahman despite having signed him at a high price for the 2026 season. No clear cricketing justification has been offered, leaving a vacuum that politics has rushed to fill.

In today’s India, that vacuum is quickly occupied by Hindutva-driven narratives that frame regional relations through the lens of loyalty, ideology and identity. Institutions that once claimed autonomy increasingly appear responsive to street pressure and social media outrage. Cricket, given its emotional power and mass appeal, has become an easy instrument in this broader political project.

To understand why this matters, one must revisit South Asia’s most enduring sporting fracture: India and Pakistan. For over a decade, bilateral cricket between the two has been suspended, not because of administrative impossibility or lack of public interest, but because politics has rendered engagement unacceptable. Matches now occur only in multilateral tournaments, on neutral soil, stripped of the intimacy and symbolism that bilateral series once carried.

This policy did not emerge overnight. It grew out of crises, terrorist attacks, media frenzy and hardened public opinion. Over time, cricket became a proxy battlefield where refusing to play was presented as an act of national resolve. The result has been a permanent freeze that has neither softened political tensions nor created leverage for peace. Instead, it has entrenched mistrust and normalized hostility.

Bangladesh, until recently, existed outside this template. Despite periodic diplomatic tensions with India over water sharing, border incidents or domestic political rhetoric cricketing relations largely endured. Tours were conducted, players exchanged leagues, and contests were marketed as friendly rivalries rather than existential confrontations. That made Bangladesh an exception in an otherwise polarized regional landscape.

The fear now is that this exception is disappearing.

If India begins to treat Bangladesh through the same prism of suspicion and punitive disengagement reserved for Pakistan, it will mark a significant shift in regional dynamics. Unlike Pakistan, Bangladesh emerged in 1971 with India’s military and diplomatic support. The relationship has always been layered and occasionally fraught, but it has rested on a foundation of shared history and interdependence. Turning that relationship into another frozen rivalry would represent not strategic maturity but political short-sightedness.

Cricket, unfortunately, offers a convenient testing ground for such shifts. It is highly visible, emotionally charged and easy to politicize. When a Bangladeshi player like Mustafizur Rahman is sidelined under opaque circumstances, the message travels far beyond the IPL dressing room. It signals to Dhaka and to the wider region that political winds can override contracts, merit and professionalism. Supporters of such measures argue that sport cannot be separated from national interest. But this argument raises a deeper South Asian dilemma: whose national interest, and defined by whom? In a region where states are still negotiating their post-colonial identities, nationalism often becomes a zero-sum game. Any engagement is portrayed as weakness; any accommodation as betrayal. Cricket administrators, instead of insulating the sport from these impulses, frequently succumb to them.

The IPL itself was once hailed as a globalised, commercial enterprise that transcended politics. Its success rested on attracting the best talent, regardless of nationality, and packaging cricket as entertainment rather than ideology. If political vetting now begins to dictate player participation, that model starts to crumble. Today it may be Bangladeshi players; tomorrow it could be others whose governments fall out of favour.

This creeping politicization also reflects the broader crisis of institutional autonomy in South Asia. Cricket boards, like many other bodies, often insist on their independence while aligning conspicuously with ruling political narratives. In India’s case, the BCCI’s immense financial power has not translated into moral or administrative distance from the state. When its decisions echo the preferences of the political establishment, perceptions of a “deep state” influence  whether accurate or not  become hard to dismiss.

For Bangladesh, the implications are sobering. Cricket is not merely a sport there; it is a source of national pride and international visibility. Being gradually excluded from meaningful bilateral engagement with India would reinforce a sense of marginalization and resentment. It could also push Dhaka to recalibrate its regional alignments in ways New Delhi may not welcome.

More broadly, the episode highlights South Asia’s chronic inability to compartmentalize. Politics bleeds into culture; culture into sport; sport into personal identity. This fusion makes reconciliation extraordinarily difficult. Unlike Europe, where sporting ties often survived even during political crises, South Asia tends to weaponize sport precisely because it matters so deeply.

Yet history offers a cautionary tale. Cricket diplomacy, for all its limitations, has at times helped defuse tension. Tours between India and Pakistan in the past created moments of human connection that official dialogues could not. Fans crossed borders, stereotypes softened and possibilities  however fragile emerged. Abandoning that legacy altogether impoverishes the region.

If India and Bangladesh are reduced to meeting only in ICC tournaments at neutral venues, South Asia will have lost another channel of engagement. Such encounters, stripped of bilateral context, lack the depth and continuity needed to build trust. They also reinforce the idea that politics must always come first, and people last.

The real dilemma, then, is not whether politics influences cricket that has always been true  but whether South Asia is willing to let politics destroy one of its few shared cultural spaces. Nationalism may win applause in the short term, but it rarely delivers long-term stability or respect.

Cricket administrators still have a choice. They can reaffirm merit, contracts and professionalism, or they can allow the sport to become an extension of political rivalry. Governments, too, can decide whether they want cricket boards to function as diplomatic tools or as custodians of a game loved across borders.

If the lesson of India-Pakistan cricket is anything to go by, prolonged disengagement creates no winners. Extending that model to Bangladesh would only multiply the region’s losses. South Asia already suffers from too few bridges; tearing down another especially one built on shared passion would be an act of collective self-harm.

Cricket cannot solve South Asia’s political dilemmas. But it can, if protected from ideological excess, remind the region of what it shares rather than what divides it. Losing that reminder would be far more damaging than any postponed tour or dropped player.
 

Shahidul Alam Swapan is a
financial analyst and author
based in Switzerland.