Politics on Pitch

For a country that prides itself on treating cricket as both sport and soft power, India is surprisingly careless when it comes to separating the two.

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The recent controversy over Bangladeshi cricketer Mustafizur Rahman's exclusion from the Kolkata Knight Riders IPL franchise should have been a routine sporting decision. Instead, it became a noisy referendum on patriotism, identity, and national loyalty. That slippage matters more than it appears.

At the heart of the debate lies a simple but vital distinction. A national team represents a state. A franchise team represents a city, a brand, and a business model. When a country chooses to boycott another nation's team after war, terror, or diplomatic breakdown, it is making a symbolic statement about state behaviour. But when a privately owned franchise sidelines a foreign player because of political pressure, it crosses into murkier territory. It turns an individual professional into a stand-in for an entire nation's politics.