Former England captain Michael Atherton has urged the International Cricket Council (ICC) to reconsider arranging matches between India and Pakistan in global tournaments. His comments come after the recent Asia Cup, which ended on September 28, with India defeating Pakistan in the final.
The eight-team event will be remembered for its controversies more than cricket. Tensions between the two teams flared following the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor. The first sign of discord came on September 14, when India, led by Suryakumar Yadav, refused to shake hands with the Pakistan players after their match.
Things got worse when Pakistan players Haris Rauf, Faheem Ashraf, and Sahibzada Farhan made provocative gestures during the Super 4s clash. The tournament ended with another controversy as India refused to accept the trophy from Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, who is also the chairman of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).
Michael Atherton Calls for transparency in future ICC event scheduling of IND vs PAK clashes
In his column for The Times, Atherton wrote that while economic and diplomatic reasons might exist for scheduling these fixtures, the time has come to stop doing so because of the worsening relationship between the two countries.
“Despite its scarcity (maybe, in part, because of its scarcity), it is a fixture that carries huge economic clout, one of the main reasons why the broadcast rights for ICC tournaments are worth so much — roughly $3 billion for the most recent rights cycle in 2023-27,” he wrote.
“Due to the relative decline in the value of bilateral matches, ICC events have grown in frequency and importance, and so the India and Pakistan fixture is crucial to the balance sheets of those who would not otherwise have any skin in the game,” he added.
Atherton pointed out that cricketing ties between India and Pakistan have now “clearly become a proxy for broader tensions.”
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“If cricket was once the vehicle for diplomacy, it is now, clearly, a proxy for broader tensions and for propaganda. There is little justification, in any case, for a serious sport to arrange tournament fixtures to suit its economic needs, and now that the rivalry is being exploited in other ways, there is even less justification for it,” Atherton wrote.
“For the next broadcast rights cycle, the fixture draw before ICC events should be transparent, and if the two teams do not meet every time, so be it,” he concluded.
