DHAKA
\nThe Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) on Sunday said that its national side will not travel to India for the T20 World Cup 2026, expressing concern \u201cover the overall circumstances\u201d in the country.
\nDiscussions over Bangladesh potentially refusing to play their T20 World Cup fixtures in India gained traction following the release of pacer Mustafizur Rahman by his Indian Premier League side amid growing tension between the two nations.
\nIn a statement, the BCB said it had decided not to send its team to India, which is co-hosting the upcoming tournament with Sri Lanka.
\n\u201cThe Board reviewed the situation in detail, taking into account developments over the last 24 hours and expressed deep concern over the overall circumstances surrounding the participation of the Bangladesh National Team in matches scheduled to be played in India,\u201d the cricket board added.
\nCiting growing concerns regarding the safety and security of the Bangladesh contingent, the BCB said that the Bangladesh team will not play its games in India.
\nIt added that it has formally requested the International Cricket Council (ICC) to consider relocating all of Bangladesh\u2019s matches to a venue outside India.
\nThe BCB said that such a measure was necessary to safeguard the safety of Bangladeshi players, team officials, and other stakeholders, and it looked forward to the ICC\u2019s urgent response to their request.
\nThe statement comes shortly after the country\u2019s sports adviser, Asif Nazrul, said that the decision was taken in the context of the extreme communal policy of India\u2019s cricket board.
\n\u201cThe board said that where a Bangladesh cricketer can\u2019t play in India despite being contracted, the entire Bangladesh cricket team can\u2019t feel safe to go to the World Cup,\u201d Nazrul said.
\n\u201cI have also instructed the board to request Bangladesh World Cup games to be held in Sri Lanka.\u201d
\nNazrul said he had ordered the BCB to write to the ICC.
\n\u201cThe board should inform that, where a Bangladeshi cricketer cannot play in India despite being contracted, the entire Bangladeshi cricket team cannot feel safe going to play in the World Cup,\u201d he wrote.\u2019
\n\u201cI have also instructed the board to request that Bangladesh\u2019s World Cup matches should be held in Sri Lanka.\u201d
\nDignity, security \u2018top priority\u2019
\nThe T20 World Cup begins on February 7, co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka. Bangladesh are scheduled to play their four group matches in India.
\nPakistan will play all their matches in Sri Lanka, part of a deal that allows both India and Pakistan to play at neutral venues in multi-nation tournaments.
\nPolitical relations between India and Bangladesh soured after a mass uprising in Dhaka in 2024 toppled then-prime minister Sheikh Hasina, a close ally of New Delhi.
\nIndia\u2019s foreign ministry last month condemned what it called \u201cunremitting hostility against minorities\u201d in Bangladesh.
\nBangladesh\u2019s interim leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, has accused India of exaggerating the scale of the violence.
\nBCB president Aminul Islam Bulbul said the board were considering their options.
\n\u201cThe dignity and security of our cricketers are our top priorities, and we will take a decision at the appropriate time, keeping these in mind,\u201d he told reporters late Saturday.
\nMustafizur, who has previously played in the IPL for other teams, was snapped up at auction in December by Kolkata for more than $1 million.
\nBut BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia said that \u201cconsidering recent developments\u201d Kolkata had been \u201cadvised to release\u201d the 30-year-old.
\nThe 2026 IPL season begins on March 26.
\nNazrul said he would also ask that the IPL be blocked by Bangladeshi broadcasters.
\n\u201cI have requested the Information and Broadcasting Adviser to stop the broadcasting of the IPL tournament in Bangladesh,\u201d he said.
\nKolkata, majority-owned by Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan, subsequently said that Mustafizur\u2019s \u201crelease has been carried out following due process and consultations\u201d.
\nThe cricket row comes only days after tensions between the nations had appeared to have eased.
\nIndia\u2019s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited Bangladesh last week, the most senior visit by an Indian official since the overthrow of Hasina.
\nOn Friday, the BCB announced that India would go to Bangladesh for six white-ball matches in September. Bangladesh will hold its first elections since the uprising on February 12.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DHAKA The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) on Sunday said that its national side will not travel to India for the T20 World Cup 2026, expressing concern \u201cover the overall circumstances\u201d in the country. Discussions over Bangladesh potentially refusing to play their T20 World Cup fixtures in India gained traction following the release of pacer Mustafizur …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":91838,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91843","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":91855,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91843\/revisions\/91855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}