A qualification to begin. The only official announcement that Pakistan have withdrawn from the match against India at the T20 World Cup has come from the Pakistan Government on social media, and there has been no statement from the Pakistan Cricket Board. So I am working on the assumption that that Government and the PCB are on the same page and working together. Of course it is entirely possible that this is not the case, and that the PCB do not agree with this move. But in the absence of any evidence of to the contrary, I will assume that they are in agreement.
It has been estimated that the cancellation of the group stage game at the T20 World Cup between India and Pakistan will cost somewhere between tens of millions of dollars, and half a billion dollars. Speaking on the Wisden Cricket Weekly Podcast, Cricexec’s Zee Zaidi explained the enormous discrepancy between these estimates. The lower figures represent the immediate loss to broadcasters in advertising revenue because the game is not proceeding. The higher figures take into account all of the potential flow on effects – the ICC are currently negotiating a global TV rights deal, and uncertainty about whether India and Pakistan will play each other at all in the immediate future necessarily drives down the value of any such deal. In any case, it is safe to describe the revenue that will be lost as a shitload of money.
Superficially it may seem that Pakistan are simply hurting themselves in order to hurt their nemesis, and that the decision makes no sense. The political and military tensions between the two nations have driven the cricket rivalry to a new level of ugliness, with the terrible and simultaneously farcical scenes at the Asia Cup where hostilities spilled over to the field of play. The political tensions between Bangladesh and India have also had cricketing consequences, and this has ultimately resulted in the former’s withdrawal from the tournament entirely. Pakistan sided with them – conspicuously the only nation to do so.
But all ICC tournaments desperately need India to play against Pakistan. So much so that the fixturing is rigged to ensure that they find themselves in the same group every time. With no bilateral fixtures since 2008, the only time that India and Pakistan play each other is at ICC tournaments, so the ICC schedule them with such regularity that they almost seem to blend into each other.
The BCCI and the PCB are in an awkward mutual dependency. Like the Gallagher brothers or Simon & Garfunkel – they apparently despise each other, and at the same time they need each other in order to make astronomical sums of money. But there is an enormous power imbalance in this toxic relationship. As the line separating the ICC from the BCCI from the BJP has steadily melted away, the PCB have slipped into a subordinate position. They feel like they are increasingly pushed around by India, at the very same time that India and world cricket needs them to play for the aforementioned financial imperatives.
There may be a growing sense in Pakistan that India will get away with this assertion of dominance because they are exploiting the fact that Pakistan cannot afford not to play the games. So from this position of relative weakness, what options do Pakistan have to assert their own power? Perhaps they have concluded that the only option left is to withdraw their labour. To blow up the World Cup and take everyone down with them. If this means that India – and everyone else in world cricket – can no longer take Pakistan’s participation for granted, then maybe they will suddenly be in a much stronger bargaining position.
It’s Nixon’s madman theory applied to world cricket – convince your opponent that you are irrational, and capable of doing seemingly crazy things in order to inflict harm on them. Scholars have criticised madman theory on the basis that it is very difficult to make it appear more than just empty threats. But Pakistan have just carried out the threat, and thus far no one has come up with a way to counter this.
The ball is now in India’s court. What options do they have at their disposal, aside from trying to placate Pakistan, that won’t cause further harm to themselves? Do they seek to use their puppets at the ICC to punish Pakistan somehow? To what end? Do they simply ignore this move and hope it doesn’t happen again? Remembering how much they need to play matches against Pakistan in the future, perhaps the only way forward is to seek to make concessions and negotiate some sort of new arrangements.
It’s a game of brinksmanship now, and it is impossible to know how it will be resolved, if it can be resolved at all. But it seems that Pakistan may have just dealt themselves into a more powerful position, albeit at the expense of a lot of money in the short term.
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