Paradoxically, the face-off between the International Cricket Council and the Bangladesh Cricket Board over the venues of the forthcoming T-20 World Cup has served political interests in both countries.
The peremptory exclusion of the Bangladeshi player Mustafizur Rahman from the Kolkata Knight Riders team was a pre-emptive move to avoid controversies during the tournament. With passions running high in West Bengal over the persecution of Hindus in Muhammad Yunus’s Bangladesh, there were high possibilities of ugly demonstrations in Kolkata over the inclusion of a Bangladeshi player. That crowds in Kolkata are inclined to be excitable was demonstrated quite vividly during Argentinian football star Lionel Messi’s shambolic visit to the city last month. These considerations must have weighed on the minds of the cricket authorities when they made the unfortunate Mustafizur a victim of the complications in India-Bangladesh relations.
