When Mohsin Naqvi, chair of the Pakistan Cricket Board, said last November he would not accept a hybrid hosting model for the 2025 Champions Trophy, it always felt like a hollow pledge.
India have not played cricket in Pakistan since 2008, and that stance is highly unlikely to change soon. And so, the sport’s most powerful nation will play their Champions Trophy matches in Dubai, while the other seven sides – including England – play across Lahore, Karachi and Rawalpindi.
In most scenarios, a country refusing to play in a major tournament’s host nation would be a simple barrier to participation. Yet for cricket, this is increasingly not an option. India’s power and influence is so overwhelming that preferential treatment is in-built to the game’s structure.
The clearest factor in this is India’s size. As the population races towards 1.5bn, a figure so immense it makes cricket the world’s second-most popular sport despite declining interest basically everywhere else, the vast majority of sponsorship and broadcast funding is tied to Indian involvement.
The Indian Premier League (IPL) is the most-watched competition in cricket and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) receives nearly 40 per cent of International Cricket Council (ICC) funding annually. More recently, outgoing BCCI president Jay Shah was named ICC chair in August.
The reasons for India’s Champions Trophy inclusion are obvious, but the triggers for their refusal to play in Pakistan are murkier and more complex.
It bears saying that this decision comes from the Indian government, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The ongoing snub is linked to ongoing conflict in Kashmir and long-standing tensions between the two nations.
In December 2022, foreign minister S Jaishankar called Pakistan the “epicentre of terrorism”, a claim repeated by the Indian envoy to the UN Security Council on Tuesday.
On the face of it, accusations of Pakistani state-backed terrorism in the Kashmir region – which has been partitioned between India and Pakistan since the British Partition of India since 1947 – are the primary cause for India’s refusal to visit its neighbour.
Security concerns around the players and matches are cited as the government’s main concern. A column in The Indian Express last November was headlined “India cannot play in Pakistan: Cricket and terror do not go together”.
Yet journalist Abubakar Bin Tallat, founder of Pakistani website Sportsinfo, believes these concerns are “an absolute illusion”.
He points to Jaishankar’s visit to Islamabad – the first by an Indian minister in nearly a decade – last October as part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, which discusses shared concerns between countries in Central Asia. Two Davis Cup fixtures between India and Pakistan have also been held in the Pakistani capital over the past six months.
Seven Indian journalists have been granted Pakistani visas for the Champions Trophy. Meanwhile, every other Test nation has toured Pakistan since 2015. Pakistan played in India in 2023 for the men’s Cricket World Cup.
Sidharth Monga, senior writer at ESPN Cricinfo India, explains that cricket carries a different emotional weight. Indian spinner Ravichandran Ashwin has previously called the India-Pakistan rivalry “bigger than the Ashes”, despite no Test match being played between the two nations since 2008 and no bilateral series since 2013.
November 2008 is a key date in this, as gunmen linked to a Pakistani armed group killed more than 160 people in Mumbai.
“Why does India feel there’s an extra security threat?” he tells The i Paper. “Because of the history between these two nations. These are going to be 15 or 20 of the most high-profile people in the country, multi-millionaires.”
But Monga agrees there is more to the refusal to play in Pakistan than security issues.
“There is no communication from the government or the BCCI, so I can only guess that India wants Pakistan to be isolated in every forum,” he says.
“Cricket brings the emotional angle into it, so for the government, it’s important not to give Pakistan legitimacy on a grand scale where everyone is watching.”
Bin Tallat expands on the suggestions of financial pressures, explaining: “In recent years, Pakistan has not had big private sponsorship, it’s banking on revenue generation from the ICC, whereas India have their own sponsorships and the IPL.
“India have nothing to lose. You get a huge amount of revenue in a match between Pakistan and India, so they are happy to play Pakistan at a neutral venue, but not come to Pakistan.”
While the government lead this policy, players and coaches often do not share the animosity.
“Cricketers from the north of India share a language with Pakistanis, and not with some of their teammates,” Monga says.
“Virat Kohli’s native tongue, Punjabi, is the same as some of the Pakistani cricketers, but not the same as Ravichandran Ashwin or Rohit Sharma. When they meet each other, there’s no animosity there.”
Perhaps the key question is how this stand-off will end and when Pakistani fans will be treated to this great rivalry on home soil again.
“We don’t know any version from the government, nor do I necessarily endorse or disapprove of it,” Monga explains.
“But I would assume tor the stand-off to end, India would want Pakistan to accept there has been some terror activity within Indian territory, and then undertake to prevent that from happening.”
“I don’t think Pakistan is ever going to admit that. I don’t see how it will end. Maybe governments change, more progressive governments come in.”
Bin Tallat suggests: “There’s only one solution, and that is the government change in India. I can bet on it. Whenever there is a new government or a new head of state in India, you will see a breakthrough.”
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