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Published : 22 Jan 2026, 05:16 PM
Bangladesh will not travel to India for the T20 World Cup, with the government standing by its earlier decision even after a high-level meeting with the country’s cricketers, Sports Advisor Asif Nazrul has said.
On Thursday, he insisted there has been no change in the security risks involved.
Speaking after talks with players in Dhaka, Nazrul said the decision was taken entirely by the government and was based on concrete security concerns in India, not on speculation or abstract analysis.
Bangladesh had been given one day to make its final call after losing a vote at the ICC board meeting on Wednesday.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) President Aminul Islam said the board would continue to push for the World Cup to be played in Sri Lanka instead.
The meeting, held at a hotel in Dhaka on Thursday afternoon, was attended by the sports advisor, the sports secretary, the BCB president and Nazmul Abedeen, head of the board’s cricket operations department.
Test captain Najmul Hossain Shanto and ODI captain Mehidy Hasan Miraz were also present, alongside other players named in Bangladesh’s World Cup squad.
Addressing reporters afterwards, Nazrul said he was a passionate supporter of cricket and of Bangladesh’s players, naming Litton Das, Miraz, Najmul, Nurul Hasan Sohan and Tamim Iqbal among those he admired.
He said everyone had wanted the team to play in the showcase event as the players had earned their place through hard work.
However, he pointed again to the case of Mustafizur Rahman being dropped from the Indian Premier League, which he said had occurred under pressure from extremists, as evidence of the risks in India.
“This fear was not created by airy speculation. It came from a real incident where one of our top players was forced out of India by the Indian cricket board bowing to extremists,” he said.
After the ICC meeting on Wednesday, the global body said in a statement that independent security assessments, full venue-based security plans and formal assurances from the host authorities had all consistently found no credible or verifiable threat to the safety of the Bangladesh team in India. But Nazrul said he did not trust those assurances.
“The ICC is not a country,” he said. “The country where my player did not get security, where the Indian cricket board -- effectively an extension of the government -- failed or was unwilling to protect him from extremists, is the same country hosting the matches.
“It will be that country’s police and security agencies who will be responsible for our players’ safety.”
“What has changed in India since that incident that should convince us there will be no extremist violence again?” he asked. “If they could not protect Mustafizur, how can we be confident they will protect our players, our journalists and our fans?”
