When news of Bangladesh’s withdrawal from the ICC T20 World Cup hit, I was at the India-Bangladesh border, chatting to a BSF jawan. He was on his usual six-or-eight hour standingp duty, leaning languidly against the bamboo railings that marked the end of Indian territory.
After that bamboo barrier – referred to on signage as IB (International Border) – a 20-odd meter patch of no man’s land begins. Another bamboo railing then marks the start of Bangladeshi territory. A short distance from the BSF jawan, the IB, the no man’s land, is a Bangladesh border guard. He sat on a lounger under a beach umbrella, backed up to his bamboo railing IB. Like the BSF jawan, he too was keeping a languorous eye on his fellow citizens.
Ignoring the uniforms, the signage, the IB-officiousness of it all flowed a river, the Jaintias of Meghalaya call Wah Umngot. When it heads southwards on turning left, the Bangladeshis call it the Shari-Goyain. The two soldiers had to keep track of whether any of their cheeky citizens for the purpose of selfies, were accidently wandering over the unmarked IB while casually wading through this ‘trans-boundary’ river. You had to laugh.
In the light of what was happening thousands of miles away, it seemed the right place for a global cricket summit. During which the officials of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the ICC including those two lightweight “heavies” – Cricket Australia and ECB – were required to take a dip into the river’s emerald waters. Maybe then they would acquire the clarity and humility needed to understand what their 2026 T20 World Cup looked like from the outside.
ICC T20 World Cups have been – how do we say this nicely without offending people – more egalitarian, more welcoming than its 50-over version. We pay full respect to Field Marshal Fifty due to its four-yearly significance. But also are trying to fathom which other sport deliberately reduces its World Cup numbers in the 21st century down to 10? The T20 World Cups however have kept growing: 12 to 16 and now 20. Every edition has always resembled a wild scramble over three-odd weeks, containing the delicious possibility of outrageous results and breakthrough performances.
At these T20 World Cups, the cricketosphere – players, officials, media, fans – run into distant friends and frenemies exchanging info, gossip, contacts, big reveals, telephone numbers, secrets, truths and falsehoods. We start out by bitching and moaning but as the event zips ahead, always find ourselves silenced by its awesomeness. By the time it’s over, we’re tripping over our vocabularies in praise and celebration.
For fans of T20Is over franchise cricket – I fight to be top of that queue – it’s the variety of champions that has always kept the World T20 bubbling. In its nine editions, its turnover of champions – India, Pakistan, England, West Indies, Sri Lanka, Australia – has been too darn good. This tenth edition had promised to be a hoot, with its mad Associates combo of Nepal, Italy, and Oman adding a dash of the unexpected. Now every Indian remembers the 2024 edition as a balm for the 2023 finale. And that there is a great chance that Surya’s Superheroes become the first team to defend their T20 World Cup title.
There is also a wider view of this event: This is cricket’s last pre-LA Olympics T20 World Cup. Played in the format in which the sport will return to the Games in 2028 after 129 years. (The 2028 T20 World Cup will be held in Australia-NZ after the Olympics). With that in mind, there couldn’t have been a better advertisement of the scale, vibrancy and passion of the game and for the game for the non-cricket world than this World Cup.
Of the 20 participating nations, originally six were from South Asia, with a combined population of approximately 2 billion people. The recently-released World Cup song Feel The Thrill ft Anirudh, offers all the feels that World Cup promos are meant to. Enough cricket action, plenty of international sightings, a catchy beat, earworm lyrics, the song sounds more global than the 2023’s 50-over World Cup mush called Jashan Jashan Bole.
But look where we are now.
It’s in that Feel the Thrill video where you first spot it. The consequences of the weeks gone by. The visible, physical erasure of Bangladesh from the video. The vanishing of Mustafizur, Litton, Taskin, Tanzid, the team itself and their raucous fans, painted faces, bouncy, stuffed tigers et al. This is a World Cup which couldn’t sort out a problem for a full-member team, which had already qualified due to its top eight finish in 2024. Due to which, the sport’s second-largest country has said it will not play a group match against the world’s biggest and richest country, to hell with the consequences.
Cricket world cups, outside of their crickety-ness, have always meant to me, a large, patchworked picnic blanket spread out over our minds for a few weeks. On which everyone, players, officials, fans, viewers indulgently sprawl themselves, partaking of whichever element of the picnic that suits them. Going from 12 to 20-teams has meant that more fabric has been added onto the blanket, of more colour and varying textures.
It was at the 2022 T20 World Cup, that Indian and Pakistani fans were recorded outside the MCG dancing and singing (tunelessly) to a hit song Pasoori. There’s parts of Feel The Thrill I’m sure would get Indians and Pakistanis dancing. Bangladeshis could be convinced to join no doubt, and as my Lankan friend Fidel Fernando reminds me, “Please understand that there is no beat that a Lankan would NOT dance to.” But at the 2026 ICC T20 World Cup, we’ll have none of that, thank you. There are rents in the fabric and adding on new bits after tossing aside older parts is not going to make it wholesome.
A little distance away from that trans-boundary river in Meghalaya, is an India-Bangladesh land border crossing. Its signage says India-Bangladesh Friendship Gate.
Two groups of people stand on either side of barricaded mile-markers, which have India painted on the side I can see and no doubt, Bangladesh on another. Trucks are crossing over on both sides. The people staring at each other are separated by at most 20 feet. We’re waving and calling out. “I’m a journalist – from Sylhet” a man yells. “I’m also a journalist – from Bangalore.” Rueful grins are shared. Before I can say, ‘so sorry about the cricket’, he’s moved on.
Our zaniest, most multi-coloured, patchwork-quilted of World Cups now stands diminished.
