Allan Khan

This chapter seeks to trace the changing relations between India and Pakistan, paying particular attention to how the changing political influences in both countries have affected the cricket teams and the cricketing relations between them. More specifically, the chapter examines the recent decline in relations which is acutely influenced by Pakistan’s worsening security situation as a result of increased terrorist activity in the country following the war on terror. This was most dramatically demonstrated in the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team which subsequently led to Pakistan losing the right to hold cricket matches at home. It also manifested itself in the Mumbai attacks that led to the severance of cricket relations between India and Pakistan in 2008. Relations have also been affected by the dramatic rise of extremist Hindu ideology in India and more specifically under Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party government since 2014. An analysis of these political changes is key to understanding the plummeting cricketing relations between India and Pakistan. Where in the past support from the Asian bloc had guaranteed Pakistan would not be isolated, today the rupture in political relations with India has meant Pakistan has been increasingly sequestered. There have also been significant economic changes that have seen the meteoric rise of India as the financial powerhouse of the global cricketing world. This has meant that India is able to use the withdrawal of cricketing relations as a means of further punishing and isolating Pakistan.