Indianization of Global Cricket

Cricket likes to call itself a gentleman’s game. Gentlemen, we are told, value fairness even when it costs them something. But modern cricket has learned arithmetic, and arithmetic has taught it a harsher lesson: fairness is expensive; compliance is cheaper. This is how the International Cricket Council now speaks—softly, bureaucratically, with the calm confidence of an institution that knows where its money comes from and where it must never risk losing it. When Bangladesh asked not to play in India, the answer was the rules. When India asked not to play in Pakistan, the answer was flexibility. Same tournament logic. Same appeals to security. Different outcomes. Cricket calls this coincidence. Fans call it déjà vu. History will call it capture.

There is a sound that money makes in cricket. It is not loud. It does not shout. It whispers through broadcast contracts, advertising slabs, and audience projections. One India–Pakistan match—just one—can generate $80 to $120 million in incremental value. Not over a season. Not across a series. In a single evening. Three hundred million viewers, sometimes more. Advertising rates that triple, sometimes quintuple. An entire tournament’s commercial logic bends toward ninety overs of shared history and unresolved politics. This is why the ICC listens carefully when the Board of Control for Cricket in India clears its throat. Not because the board is louder. But because it pays the rent. Nearly 90% of ICC broadcast revenue flows from the Indian market. Over two-thirds of global cricket’s commercial value is anchored there. The numbers are not secret. They are too impolite to mention in press releases. And so the ICC has learned a habit: when the largest market hesitates, rules soften; when smaller boards object, rules harden.

Neutrality is the ICC’s favorite word. It wears it like a blazer—well-cut, reassuring, endlessly reused. But neutrality that bends only in one direction is not neutrality. It is alignment. When India declined to travel to Pakistan, neutral venues appeared—Dubai, compromises, logistical creativity. When Bangladesh raised concerns about playing in India, neutrality suddenly meant immobility. No neutral ground. No accommodation. Only obligation. The message was not written, but it was understood: some refusals are strategic. Others are insubordination. 

Now, imagine Pakistan refusing to play India. The ICC would lose money—yes. Broadcasters would protest—briefly. Sponsors would grumble—quietly. But the damage would not be shared equally. Pakistan would lose participation fees. Pakistan would lose future leverage.  Pakistan would risk being framed as “unreliable,” a word global sport reserves for those without economic insurance. India would lose a fixture.  Pakistan would risk its future. This is the paradox of protest in unequal systems: the price of dissent is calibrated to hurt the dissenter most.

No one at the ICC wakes up intending to betray principles. Institutions rarely fall that way. They drift. They drift when revenue projections become strategy. Furthermore, they drift when one market subsidizes the whole structure. They drift when flexibility becomes selective but is still called procedural. And one day, without a vote or a declaration,

governance quietly transforms into dependency. What remains is a regulatory body that still speaks of equality but acts according to market gravity.

This is not about India versus Pakistan. It is not even about Bangladesh. It is about a game deciding—slowly, almost politely—whether it will be governed by rules or by revenue curves. Because once fairness becomes conditional on audience size, once precedent depends on purchasing power, once neutrality must be profitable to exist, then cricket is no longer administered. It is managed. And managed systems do not ask who is right. They ask who can afford to be wrong.

Cricket still calls itself global. But a global game cannot survive long if its conscience is regional. Until the ICC learns to say “no” with the same confidence it says “yes” to power, until flexibility is applied upward and downward alike, until rules are not rewritten by ratings—the scorecard will look balanced, the press releases will sound calm, and the game will quietly lose something far harder to replace than money: its claim to fairness.