Wisden editor slams ‘Orwellian’ cricket authorities for being beholden to India’s ruling party

The editor of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack has called out India’s cricket board for aligning closely with Narendra Modi’s right-wing government.

Lawrence Booth, editor of the annual publication dubbed the Bible of Cricket, pointed to the growing influence of Indian politics on the sport in his latest editorial and said that the BCCI’s connection with the ruling Hindu nationalist BJP was no longer subtle.

“It was obvious long before this latest grandstanding that the BCCI were the sporting adjunct of India’s ruling BJP,” he wrote.

“But the relationship became explicit when India captain Suryakumar Yadav dedicated the first of his side’s three Asia Cup wins over Pakistan to the armed forces.”

In April last year, militants killed 26 people, mostly tourists, in the restive Himalayan region of Kashmir, triggering a four-day military conflict between India and Pakistan. The fighting kicked off when the Indian military launched airstrikes on what it alleged was terrorist infrastructure across the border, calling it “Operation Sindoor”.

Pakistan reported that Indian missiles had struck multiple civilian locations, including a mosque in the province of Punjab, resulting in casualties, and carried out retaliatory strikes.

Although the fighting was halted by a ceasefire brokered by the US, tensions continued to simmer and overshadowed the cricket matches between the two sides at the Asia Cup in September as well as the T20 World Cup earlier this year.

“The idea that cricket was now a legitimate proxy for more lethal activity was hammered home on X by India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, after his country beat Pakistan in the final: ‘Operation Sindoor on the games field. Outcome is the same – India wins!’” Mr Booth wrote. “The real-world Operation Sindoor had left dozens dead, on both sides of the border. Now it was being equated with a game of T20. Suryakumar lapped it up, suggesting that ‘it feels good when the country’s leader himself bats on the front foot – it felt like he took the strike and scored runs’.”

“If India were so appalled by Pakistan, they should simply have refused to play them. Instead, they opted for humiliation. But it was all performative: before the public snub, the captains had shaken hands in private,” he added. “And when the two nations’ Under-21 hockey teams met soon after in Malaysia, the game ended with hugs and high-fives.”

Indian captain Suryakumar Yadav walks past his Pakistani counterpart Salman Agha after the toss at the T20 Cricket World Cup group stage match in Colombo on 15 February 2026 (AFP via Getty)

Indian and Pakistani hockey players did not shake hands before their Under-21 Sultan of Johor Cup match last October, but they did exchange high-fives. A viral video showed the Pakistan team lining up as the Indian players went down the row, greeting each of them with high-fives before taking their positions for the game in Johor Bahru.

After the Asia Cup final in Dubai, Yadav said India were denied the chance to hoist the trophy as it was removed from the presentation ceremony following the team’s refusal to accept it from Mohsin Naqvi, chairman of the Asian Cricket Council and interior minister of Pakistan.

“Cricket has become an important piece on the BJP’s geopolitical chessboard and the Asia Cup descended into tit-for-tat farce, with players on both sides making tasteless gestures about fighter planes, and India refusing to take the stage to receive the trophy from Naqvi,” Mr Booth wrote.

“At the time of writing, the trophy is thought to be under lock and key in the UAE, a neat symbol of international cricket’s dysfunction.”

At the T20 World Cup, Yadav and Salman Agha, the captain of Pakistan, skipped the customary handshake, walking past each other without any gesture.

The Independent has contacted the BCCI for comment.

In his editorial, Mr Booth also cited the case of Bangladeshi bowler Mustafizur Rahman, who was bought by the Kolkata Knight Riders team to play in the Indian Premier League but subsequently dropped under pressure from the BCCI.

“It was retaliation for the murder of Hindu men in Bangladesh, and a shot across the bows of KKR’s Bollywood owner Shah Rukh Khan, a Muslim, and a regular target of Hindu nationalists,” Mr Booth wrote. “The fate of Mustafizur confirmed cricket’s descent into the hands of its political masters, just as Suryakumar embodied its acquiescence.”

Mustafizur Rahman of Bangladesh reacts during a match against New Zealand in 2023 (Getty)

The exclusion of Rahman spiralled into a diplomatic crisis, with Bangladesh pulling out of the 2026 Men’s T20 World Cup after the International Cricket Council refused its request to move matches outside India.

Mr Booth contrasted this with the Champions Trophy in 2025 when India’s demand for a neutral venue was accommodated. “Faced with a similar situation in 2025, when India refused to visit Pakistan for the Champions Trophy, and insisted on playing all their games in Dubai, the ICC had bent over backwards to accommodate them. But Bangladesh were kicked out of the tournament, despite their request to move games to co-hosts Sri Lanka,” he wrote.

“Indian apologists were quick to deny the equivalence, arguing that the BCCI had given the ICC more notice than the Bangladesh board, as if that deserved a pat on the back,” he added.

“The sport’s governance grows ever more Orwellian, pretending that Indian exceptionalism comes without consequence, and blaming those lower down the food chain for lashing out,” he concluded. “Predictably, almost no prominent voices in the Indian game addressed the root cause of the carnage: the politicisation of a sport that, whatever Naqvi may say, has never been untouched by the real world, yet never more poisoned by it either.”