Why does the burden of patriotism and national retribution fall on our cricketers (and Bollywood) only?
Cricket and Bollywood are India’s national pastime and unified faith. It helps that these two sectors are money-generating machines as well. That could be the reason why the country organises its beliefs, faiths, notions of valour, revenge and victory in battlefields around these two games of entertainment. Here, fiction and fact collide and produce various outcomes, which are debated vociferously during peak times and sleeping times. Government, governance, Parliament law-making and other such stuff are constantly reduced to standby status as long as these two sectors deliver the goods. Which they do.
Also read: With Mustafizur episode, India risks pushing Dhaka further towards Islamabad
In fact, unlike the government, these two sectors have delivered results expected by the masses time and again. Victory in World Cup by decimating our “enemy country” occurs in the realm of the real. But what occurs in the realm of the imagined also satisfies the masses fed on millions of fake reels and WhatsApp forwards. To this segment belongs the success of jingoistic films like Dhurandhar, where fact and fiction are poured into the pot, and a heady intoxicating brew is made by stirring it for some time with some ingredients added. So Bollywood and cricket have delivered consistently, but the same cannot be said of the government. But that doesn’t matter as long as triumphs are delivered digitally, or on paper or on the cricket ground. We are a happy country because even if we don’t win on the battlefield, we will definitely win on the multiplex screen.
BCCI asks KKR to release Mustafizur
But there are occasions when these two sectors, Bollywood and cricket, are asked to bow to the diktats of government policy. The IPL team Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), the team owned by Shah Rukh Khan, was asked to get rid of Bangladesh cricketer Mustafizur Rahman, whom they had picked at the IPL 2026 auction for Rs 9.20 crore from the list of registered players provided by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) itself. This happened because some right-wing fanatic X (formerly Twitter) handles had called for the exclusion of Bangladeshi cricketers. In other words, KKR, which is a franchise team, has had the burden of striking a political blow, a job which is normally handled by the governments of respective countries. In this case, the foreign minister S Jaishankar had only a few days before shown the courtesy of attending the funeral of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) chief and former prime minister Khalida Zia who died on December 30 and meeting various leaders of the country in an attempt to normalise relations which had deteriorated drastically even since Sheikha Hasina was overthrown in a student-led rebellion.
Despite the power he wields, Jay Shah has taken no responsibility for anything that the BCCI has done over the past six years.
Bangladesh has retaliated by asking that its T20 World Cup matches, to be played in Kolkata and Mumbai in February, be moved out of India. A boycott by Bangladesh is likely in response to this illegal dismissal, which will be seen as an insult. According to reports, the holding of the T20 World Cup, co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka, is thus in jeopardy due mostly to BCCI’s illegal intrusion into a foreign policy issue just to satisfy fanatic elements. The IPL is thus becoming thinner and thinner, with Pakistani players already informally banned. No one in the BCCI takes responsibility for any such major issue. No instructions are issued in writing, and there is no comment made by any senior official nor anyone who takes responsibility for the decision. This is because the BCCI is ruled or remotely controlled by Jay Shah, the son of Union Home Minister Amit Shah andBJP MP Anurag Thakur, who is a former BCCI president. Despite the power he wields, Jay Shah has taken no responsibility for anything that the BCCI has done over the past six years when he has been running the BCCI first as secretary (2019-2024) and now as ICC Chairman. It is no wonder that the last two presidents of the BCCI, Roger Binny and now the unknown Mithun Manhas, are puppets and have not uttered a single word about cricket policy, about the plans of the BCCI or any other myriad issues confronting cricket and its running. In the BCCI silence of the Presidents is golden. Jay Shah also does not communicate his thoughts. He just carries it out. His thumbprint can be seen all over the latest sacking episode.
No handshake with Pakistan
Similarly, when India played Pakistan in Asia Cup T20 matches recently, the team was put in a totally uncomfortable situation by not being allowed to shake hands of Pakistan players. Even the captain Suryakumar Yadav was put in a peculiar and terrible situation by being asked not to shake hands with the Pakistan captain during the toss, a long-held tradition which symbolises the concept of sporting spirit without which the sport will suffer. That is the fate that faces Indian cricket today. If both Pakistan and Bangladesh refuse to come to India, which big tournament can be held here? Where will the revenue come from? In fact the stand of the BCCI, in the absence of any government directive, smacks of a sense of playing to the right-wing looney gallery and, of course, knee-jerk.
If Bangladesh refuses to come to India for the February-March T20 World Cup, the real trouble will start. Cricket in the subcontinent will be in a total shambles.
In movies too, actors of Bollywood are called upon frequently as if it was a national chorus to deliver deathly bows to the enemy countries. So far, it was only Pakistan which was the regular target of such jingoism; now Bangladesh has been added to that list. If till now Lahore and Karachi were centres where Indian soldiers, spies and proud nationalists landed blows on the solar plexus of the enemies to wild cheers, now that locale will have to be extended to Dhaka and Chittagong, places absent from our mainstream cinema. Actors who take cudgels for such jingoism are a busy lot now, jumping from one nationalistic set or location to another to deliver killer blows or to lob grenades.
Will Indian cricket pay a heavy price?
In both these cases, organisations other than the government are forced to play roles which they are not equipped to or meant for. If Bangladesh has to be given a rap on the knuckles, it is definitely not the BCCI’s role to do it. If Pakistan has to be taught a lesson, it is definitely not for the captain of the Indian cricket team to do it. If a Pakistan or any country has to be scoffed at or beaten into submission is it the job of Bollywood to do it? So far in India this is the case. Of course, Operation Sindoor was launched, but beyond that, why not allow a handshake if we have decided to play Pakistan? A nation has been asked to sit back and watch a ridiculous proxy war (note the number of jingoistic films released in the last two years) while the people who have to fight the diplomatic war have done nothing realistic, the Bangladesh visit of the foreign minister being an exception. There is no doubt that India was caught off guard in the violent and sudden overthrow of both the Bangladesh and Nepal governments, which doesn’t say much about our security and intelligence capabilities.
Also read: Bangladesh bans IPL telecast over Mustafizur Rahman’s exit from KKR
So what role is the BCCI actively playing? BCCI is definitely under the mistaken notion that it is an ally of the government in foreign affairs and diplomatic warfare. So it rises to the occasion to rap the knuckles of an imagined enemy and looks for applause. BCCI doesn’t know what it is doing and what Bangladesh has done to harm our cricket. “When you don’t call things by their real and honest name, you get in trouble,” Thomas Friedman has written in respect of US foreign policy and this is the case with the BCCI also.
If Bangladesh refuses to come to India for the February-March T20 World Cup, the real trouble will start. Cricket in the subcontinent will be in total shambles. It is high time that the president of BCCI Manhas talks on BCCI policy or at least says something to announce his role as president. He, like Binny before him, is surely a reluctant president with nothing having come out of him. Why have a BCCI president? For all that, Indian cricket will have to pay a heavy price in the near future.
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