Off-side: Sport is a bridge that no longer reaches both sides

Sport likes to imagine itself above borders. The Olympic Charter espouses the principle that athletes should not pay the price for the actions of States. But when Israel continues uninterrupted within the Olympic movement while Russian and Belarusian athletes remain excluded, those lofty ideals begin to fray.

That fraying is now visible closer to home, when the Board of Control for Cricket in India nudged three-time Indian Premier League (IPL) champion Kolkata Knight Riders into releasing Bangladesh pacer Mustafizur Rahman amid rising political unease between the two nations.

In doing so, public anger, social media noise, and political mood were allowed to dictate a sporting decision.

But this is not without precedent. In 2013, amid protests in Tamil Nadu, the BCCI asked IPL franchises not to field Sri Lankan players in Chennai after the then Chief Minister of the State wrote to the Prime Minister seeking a ban.

And yet, for decades, sport has been used as a diplomatic back channel. In 1971, ping-pong diplomacy thawed relations between the United States and China when politicians could not. In 1995, Nelson Mandela used rugby, a sport that symbolised white supremacy, to unite post-apartheid South Africa, turning the South African national rugby team into a vehicle for reconciliation rather than division.

Closer to home, India-Pakistan cricket has often served as a pressure valve. Matches did not resolve disputes, but they allowed dialogue when it was otherwise frozen. Even the Koreas marched together under one flag at the Olympics and fielded joint teams, using sport not to erase political differences but at least to temporarily suspend them.

Today, however, India and Pakistan have not played cricket on each other’s soil for years, the 2023 ODI World Cup being the only recent exception. Pakistan’s T20 World Cup matches this year will be staged in Sri Lanka. And if Bangladesh is next, then sport is no longer responding to geopolitics; it is being held hostage by it.

Sport once prided itself on being a bridge. But now, that bridge is narrowing.

When boards start pre-empting outrage rather than insulating athletes, the message is that sport will follow the loudest sentiment in the room.

The tragedy is not that sport is being mixed with politics. This has always happened. It is that sport is no longer pretending to soften the edges of politics. Instead of shrinking distances, it is beginning to mirror the same fault lines, amplifying them.

Published on Jan 06, 2026