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Key Takeaways
- 1📊 Bangladesh’s World Cup games in India now shrouded in uncertainty
- 2🏆 Mustafizur’s KKR exit has spiralled into a full-blown boardroom standoff
- 3💡 Players and staff are stuck between politics and their World Cup dreams
- 4🔮 ICC talks will likely decide if Bangladesh play in India or move venues
"Bangladesh cricket finds itself mired in uncertainty as political tensions and security concerns over India travel leave players, officials, and coaches anxious ahead of the World Cup"
Tension is thick in Mirpur as the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB)’s standoff with BCCI over the 2026 T20 World Cup in India turns Sher-e-Bangla into a political battleground rather than a cricketing hub.
World Cup dream tangled in politics
Every day, journalists troop into the Sher-e-Bangla Stadium hoping for clarity, but all they get is more intrigue around BCB’s dramatic decision not to travel to India after Mustafizur Rahman was removed from Kolkata Knight Riders’ IPL 2026 squad on security grounds.
The issue has snowballed into a national flashpoint, with Bangladesh’s sports adviser Asif Nazrul strongly backing BCB’s hard line, framing it as a matter of national pride and the safety of players, fans and media travelling across the border.
Inside the dressing room and support staff corridors, though, the mood is far less combative and far more anxious. For the players – the biggest stakeholders in this storm – the uncertainty is suffocating. Do they prepare mentally for a World Cup in India, brace for relocation, or quietly accept the possibility of missing the tournament altogether?
Instead of talking match-ups in Kolkata and Mumbai or plotting how to counter Team India in home conditions, Bangladesh’s cricketers are caught between diplomatic posturing and boardroom brinkmanship, waiting for ICC intervention to decide their World Cup fate.
For now, Sher-e-Bangla feels less like the home of Bangladesh cricket and more like the epicentre of an Indo-Bangla power game in which the players have the least say, but the most to lose.
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