Cricket has remained one of the few arenas of sustained regional interaction in South Asia, even as formal institutions weakened. It survived wars, regime changes, border crises, and diplomatic freezes. When formal diplomacy failed, cricket carried the emotional residue of regional belonging. It allowed South Asia to imagine itself, however briefly, as a shared cultural space. Bangladesh’s recent decision to step back from playing scheduled T20 World Cup games in India, therefore, cannot be dismissed as a sporting or administrative matter. It is a rupture and the weakening of a cultural grammar that sustained South Asia in the past.

One of the immediate triggers for Bangladesh’s hardline stance was the controversy surrounding Mustafizur Rahman, Bangladesh’s premier left-arm fast bowler. Rahman had been signed by the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) for the Indian Premier League (IPL) 2026 season, becoming the most expensive Bangladeshi player in the league’s history, only to be released abruptly at the direction of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). The unexplained removal, coming at a time of heightened political tension between Dhaka and New Delhi, was widely interpreted in Bangladesh as a political decision rather than a purely sporting one.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), backed by government advisories, has publicly stated that its national team will not travel to India for the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 under current conditions, citing concerns over security and dignity. Moreover, Bangladesh has demanded that its scheduled matches in Kolkata and Mumbai be shifted to Sri Lanka, a request that the ICC has so far resisted. 

Changing Power Dynamics

On the contrary, India–Pakistan cricket diplomacy has retained a limited but recognisable constructive role. Despite wars, terrorist attacks, and prolonged diplomatic freezes, cricket between the two has rarely been abandoned outright. Matches have been suspended, sometimes for long periods, but not erased. Cricket has functioned as a controlled pressure valve, which has been selective and tightly managed, yet symbolically preserved. Much of this endurance has been sustained by the South Asian cricket public, whose enthusiasm kept the spectacle alive, even when infused with nationalist sentiment. Quite significantly, even in an adversarial relationship, certain cultural channels have been treated as too valuable to sever completely. Bangladesh’s decision points to a different regional temperament which has been articulated through disengagement rather than managed rivalry. In regional politics, disengagement is often more consequential than confrontation.

This also speaks to changing power dynamics within South Asia. Bangladesh today is comparatively more economically resilient and diplomatically diversified than in previous decades even amid internal challenges. Its foreign policy now is not structured around singular relationships or inherited sentiments. In such a context, cultural deference is not automatic, especially in arenas where India is assumed to be central,. Cricket now becomes a site where asymmetries are felt most viscerally.

For India, the episode raises uncomfortable questions about soft power in its immediate neighbourhood. It is treated as an automatic by-product of size, visibility, and cultural reach. Yet soft power, unlike material power, is sustained through reciprocity and sensitivity. It erodes through accumulated perceptions of neglect and imbalance. When neighbours withdraw from cultural engagement, it is rarely because of a single grievance; it is because the relationship has ceased to feel mutual.

Shrinking Of Cultural Spaces

At a broader level, it is the ongoing unravelling of South Asia as a fragmented set of calculated space. Because the region now is not held together by institutions, ideology, or even shared postcolonial sentiment. This has left countries relying on bilateral calculations, smaller sub-regional arrangements, and partnerships with extra-regional actors. In such a landscape, cricket diplomacy becomes very fragile. Cricket’s decline as regional glue does not mean that it loses political significance. But when cricket stops being ‘just cricket’, it tells us that the informal norms sustaining coexistence are thinning, and it also tells us that South Asia’s emotional economy, which was rich in mutual recognition, is now getting replaced by a colder arithmetic of national interest.

This is certainly not a call to romanticise sport or overstate its diplomatic capacity. Neither did cricket ever resolve South Asia’s conflicts. But it softened their edges. It reminded the public that despite borders and disputes there existed a cultural language. The erosion of that language should now concern the whole of South Asia. Because when even the simplest forms of cultural exchange become difficult, rebuilding trust happens to be infinitely harder.

Has South Asia’s tragedy been the absence of power or identity? Perhaps not. The tragedy has been the gradual shrinking of spaces where both could coexist without coercion. Cricket was always one such space. Therefore, its politicisation is not the real issue, but its abandonment is worrying. If this phase is allowed to pass without looking back, South Asia risks losing a sport which is one of the last mirrors in which it could still recognise itself.

(The author is a PhD Candidate, Dept. of International Relations, Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Views expressed are personal. She can be contacted at sancharighosh093@gmail.com )