Bangladesh have maintained their refusal to travel to India for the upcoming ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, even after the International Cricket Council (ICC) on Wednesday warned that the team could be replaced if it continued to push for an alternative venue.
The position was reaffirmed following a meeting in Dhaka on Thursday involving Bangladesh’s sports adviser Asif Nazrul, Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president Aminul Islam, CEO Nizamuddin and several national team players. The outcome leaves Bangladesh facing the possibility of missing the tournament, which begins on February 7.
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A group of senior players, including Nurul Hasan, Shamim Hossain, Hasan Mahmud, Nazmul Hossain Shanto, Jaker Ali and Saif Hassan, attended the meeting, underscoring the seriousness of the situation as the deadline set by the ICC approaches.
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Addressing the media after the meeting, BCB president Aminul said the board would continue to push for a venue change. “We will go back to the ICC with our plan to play in Sri Lanka,” Aminul said at a press conference after the meeting. “They did give us a 24-hour ultimatum but a global body can’t really do that. ICC will miss out on 200 million people watching the World Cup. It will be their loss.”
Nazrul escalated the standoff with the International Cricket Council by accusing the global body of failing to deliver justice over the country’s security concerns ahead of the T20 World Cup in India.
“I think we did not get justice from ICC. Whether we will play in the World Cup or not is entirely a government decision. Nothing happened in India in the recent past that suggests things have changed there (security- wise). We hope ICC will give us justice.”
“All of us want to play the T20 World Cup because our players have earned this through hard work. But the security risk situation in India has not changed. The security concerns did not arise from speculation or theoretical analysis. They arose from a real incident, where one of our country’s top players was forced to bow to extremists, and the Indian cricket board asked him to leave India. Simply put, he was told to leave.
“Now this ICC tournament is being held in India. No matter how much the ICC says there is no security risk, the ICC does not have its own country. The country where my player was not safe – and where the Indian cricket board, which is an extended arm of the government, failed or was unwilling to provide him security under pressure from extremists – that is the country hosting this tournament,” he added.
He also criticised what he described as a lack of outreach from both the ICC and the Indian government. “The ICC has made no effort to convince us. They ignored the real incident and only talked about their standard security procedures. They did not take a proper position on the actual grievance.
“Even the Indian government made no effort to convince us by saying the incident involving Mustafizur was isolated, or that they were sorry, or that they were taking steps. They made no effort to contact us, no effort to reassure us about the safety of our journalists, spectators and players. Therefore, there is no scope for changing our decision,” he added.
In the original schedule released by the ICC, Bangladesh are placed in Group C alongside England, Italy, West Indies and Nepal, and are set to play their first three matches in Kolkata before concluding the group stage in Mumbai. Their opening fixture is against West Indies on February 7, the first day of the tournament.
If Bangladesh are removed from the tournament, Scotland are the frontrunners to take their place in Group C. Scotland narrowly missed qualification for the 2026 T20 World Cup, finishing behind the Netherlands, Italy and Jersey at the European Qualifier.
The issue of security came as a retaliation from the Bangladesh government and BCB, a day after a directive from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on January 3, asking Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) to release Bangladesh fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman from their IPL 2026 squad.
While no official reason was provided for the move, it coincided with a downturn in diplomatic relations between India and Bangladesh.
The following day, January 4, the BCB wrote to the ICC after consultations with the Bangladesh government, formally informing the governing body that the national team would not travel to India for its T20 World Cup matches due to security concerns. That position has remained unchanged despite multiple rounds of discussions with the ICC since then.
The ICC, however, has dismissed the Mustafizur Rahman episode as a valid basis for Bangladesh’s stance, stating that the BCB was “repeatedly linking its participation in the tournament to a single, isolated and unrelated development concerning one of its player’s involvement in a domestic league. This linkage has no bearing on the tournament’s security framework or the conditions governing participation in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup.”
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