The irony would be delicious if it weren’t so damaging. India, aspiring to join the world’s most elite club of Olympic host nations, is busy demonstrating precisely why it shouldn’t be trusted with such a responsibility. On Saturday, cricket’s Men’s T20 World Cup will kick off, co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka. The ongoing saga of boycotts, visa denials, and cricket diplomacy ahead of the event has exposed a troubling truth: India’s government appears willing to weaponize sports for political purposes, exactly the behavior the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has warned against.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made hosting the 2036 Summer Olympics a centerpiece of his vision for India’s global standing. The pitch is compelling: a nation of 1.4 billion people, the world’s fifth-largest economy, ready to showcase its modernity to the world. But then there’s the reality playing out in cricket, the sport India actually dominates.
The irony would be delicious if it weren’t so damaging. India, aspiring to join the world’s most elite club of Olympic host nations, is busy demonstrating precisely why it shouldn’t be trusted with such a responsibility. On Saturday, cricket’s Men’s T20 World Cup will kick off, co-hosted by India and Sri Lanka. The ongoing saga of boycotts, visa denials, and cricket diplomacy ahead of the event has exposed a troubling truth: India’s government appears willing to weaponize sports for political purposes, exactly the behavior the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has warned against.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has made hosting the 2036 Summer Olympics a centerpiece of his vision for India’s global standing. The pitch is compelling: a nation of 1.4 billion people, the world’s fifth-largest economy, ready to showcase its modernity to the world. But then there’s the reality playing out in cricket, the sport India actually dominates.
The crisis began innocuously enough. In January, the Board of Control for Cricket in India instructed the Kolkata Knight Riders to release Bangladeshi fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman from the Indian Premier League. The given reason was “developments … all across”—a clumsy euphemism for the political tensions between New Delhi and Dhaka following violence against Hindus in Bangladesh. That a player could be expelled from a supposedly apolitical sporting competition for reasons having nothing to do with cricket was troubling enough. What followed was worse.
Bangladesh, citing security concerns for its players, asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to relocate its T20 World Cup matches from India to Sri Lanka. The request was denied. Bangladesh was subsequently expelled from the tournament and replaced by Scotland. Pakistan, which has its own complex relationship with India and already plays all its matches in Sri Lanka under a hybrid arrangement, criticized the ICC’s “double standards.” Most damningly, Pakistan is now refusing to play its match against India, depriving the tournament (and hundreds of millions of cricket fans everywhere) of its marquee matchup.
But the controversy doesn’t end there. Players of Pakistani descent representing Canada, Italy, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, and the United States have faced visa denials or delays. The ICC has had to intervene, desperately trying to ensure that all players and support staff can participate. The message to the world: India may not guarantee entry even to athletes in events it agreed to host.
This is not some abstract diplomatic spat. It is what hosting a major international sporting event under the current Indian government looks like. The Olympics involve 206 national committees, including from countries with which India has difficult relationships. Would athletes from these countries face similar obstacles? Would their participation depend on the political temperature of the moment? The IOC has already identified three concerns with India’s bid: governance issues, anti-doping failures, and poor Olympic performance. Now add a fourth: selective admission policies based on political considerations.
The contrast with India’s cricket diplomacy of the past could not be starker. Before the Indian cricket team toured Pakistan in 2004, then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee handed captain Sourav Ganguly a bat inscribed with the words “Don’t just win matches, win hearts too.” That “Friendship Series,” coming a few years after a short war between the countries, represented cricket at its best as a bridge between hostile neighbors. Special visas allowed thousands of Indian fans to travel to Pakistan. The message was clear: Sports could transcend politics.
Today’s approach is the inverse. Cricket has become a weapon, wielded to score political points and express nationalist grievances. Social media campaigns, as journalist Suhasini Haidar noted on X, are being allowed to “overpower [India’s] diplomacy.”
The Olympic Charter is explicit: “The practice of sport is a human right” that should be free from “any form of discrimination.” Speaking about countries’ Olympic aspirations, IOC member Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic recently warned of the “growing politicization of sport” and its implications for future hosts.
India’s defenders might argue that every country balances security concerns with sporting openness, that visa decisions are sovereign matters. Fair enough. But if India wants to host the Olympics, it needs to meet a higher standard. It needs to demonstrate that it can welcome the world—all of it—without political preconditions. The 2036 Games would require hosting roughly 10,500 athletes from more than 200 countries, not to mention officials, media, and hundreds of thousands of visitors.
The current crisis suggests that India either cannot or will not guarantee their presence at the Games. More concerning, it suggests that the Modi government doesn’t see why it should. The nationalist politics that drive visa denials for Pakistani-origin cricketers play well domestically. Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party benefits from being seen as tough on Pakistan and Bangladesh. But what works in domestic politics doesn’t work in international sports governance.
The IOC will be watching this World Cup drama unfold. So will other potential host nations—including Chile, Indonesia, Qatar, and Turkey—competing for 2036. India’s actions are providing them with a powerful argument: If New Delhi can’t even guarantee entry to cricketers for a tournament it’s co-hosting, how can it be trusted with the Olympics?
Modi wants India to be seen as a rising power, capable of organizing events of unprecedented scale and complexity. But hosting the Olympics isn’t just about building stadiums and hotels. It’s about demonstrating a fundamental commitment to the Olympic spirit, including the belief that sport transcends politics and that competition happens on the field, not at the visa office. Right now, India is failing that test spectacularly.
