Former England captain Michael Atherton has called on the International Cricket Council (ICC) to reconsider its policy of having India vs Pakistan matches in big tournaments, particularly after recent hostilities in the Men’s Asia Cup. The tournament culminated on September 28 with India winning the title against Pakistan in the final, but it was tainted with controversy and political overtones that overshadowed the sport.
In a column for The Times, Atherton conceded the economic and diplomatic benefits motivating such prestige matches but contended that the time had arrived to end them because of the deteriorating political bilateral relationship between the two nations. Atherton pointed out that since 2013, India and Pakistan have encountered each other in each ICC competition, with this year’s Asia Cup also consisting of three meetings all going in favor of India.
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“Despite its scarcity (maybe, in part, because of its scarcity), it is a fixture that carries huge economic clout, one of the main reasons why the broadcast rights for ICC tournaments are worth so much — roughly $3 billion for the most recent rights cycle in 2023-27,” he wrote.
“Due to the relative decline in the value of bilateral matches, ICC events have grown in frequency and importance, and so the India and Pakistan fixture is crucial to the balance sheets of those who would not otherwise have any skin in the game,” he added.
Atherton cautioned that such fixtures have crossed the realm of sport and now amount to “a proxy for wider tensions,” and criticized the ICC for using the rivalry for commercial purposes instead of for peace or sportsmanship.
“If cricket was once the vehicle for diplomacy, it is now, clearly, a proxy for broader tensions and for propaganda. There is little justification, in any case, for a serious sport to arrange tournament fixtures to suit its economic need,s and now that the rivalry is being exploited in other ways, there is even less justification for it,” Atherton wrote.
“For the next broadcast rights cycle, the fixture draw before ICC events should be transparen,t and if the two teams do not meet every time, so be it,” he added.
