Kamal Ghorui
The 2026 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, being published on Thursday, says that the game’s previous USP as a “refuge from realpolitik” has been poisoned by the growing politicisation of the sport under India’s “Orwellian” influence.The “Notes by the Editor” of the 163rd edition of the annual, targets India’s growing political influence over the game, saying,“Cricket has become an important piece on BJP’s geopolitical chessboard”.“Was there a clearer indictment of the game’s governance in 2025 than Pakistan Cricket Board chairman Mohsin Naqvi’s assertion that ‘politics and sport can’t go together’? Presumably he had forgotten he was also his country’s interior minister,” editor Lawrence Booth writes.Booth refers to how the 2025 Men’s Asia Cup, held in the UAE, “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”. The Asia Cup was played amidst heightened tensions between India and Pakistan as it was the first time the two were meeting on the cricket field after Operation Sindoor following the Pahalgam massacre by terrorists. India won and refused to shake hands with the Pakistan side.“It was obvious long before this latest grandstanding that the BCCI were the sporting adjunct of India’s ruling BJP,” Booth wrote, adding, “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. And the idea that cricket was now a legitimate proxy for more lethal activity was hammered home on X… The real-world Operation Sindoor had left dozens dead…” Booth wrote. “Now it was being equated with a game of T20.”Booth lamented that the game’s governance “grows ever more Orwellian, pretending that Indian exceptionalism comes without consequence”. He also wrote that the decision by Kolkata Knight Riders to release Mustafizur Rahman “confirmed cricket’s descent into the hands of its political masters”.
