Ashfaq-Ul-Alam

Batters celebrating after reaching a milestone, be it a half-century, century or further increments of fifty, is commonplace in cricket, almost everyone does it.

Ahead of every major sporting event, analysts, ex-players and fans alike come up with predictions about how the tournament will pan out. Debates rage over which team will get knocked out early, who will proceed to the next phase and, eventually, who will lift the trophy.

Going solely by outcomes, International Cricket Council’s (ICC’s) dream of globalising the game through T20Is has taken a hit so far in the ongoing ICC T20 World Cup, with Associate nations seemingly regressing, reaching a low they have not experienced in over a decade.

When was the last time you were ripped off? Getting ripped off is pretty much a universal human experience. Kids get tricked into buying shiny toys that break down in the first try, adults get talked into investing in a pyramid scheme and lose their savings, and the elderly get duped into buying a supposed all-curing cream from online, which ends up giving them rashes.

After an eventful buildup, ripe with cricketing diplomacy and wider geopolitical implications, perennial enemies India and Pakistan are set to face off in Colombo in their Group A match of the ongoing ICC T20 World Cup tomorrow.

Politics has always been an inseparable part of cricket. It has been so since the days of the Imperial Cricket Council – the previous name of the International Cricket Council – when being a member of the Commonwealth was one of the prerequisites for becoming a Test nation.

If international sports can be equated as pseudo-battles between two competing nations, mega sporting events like a World Cup or the Olympics can be thought of as an all-out war with honour at stake.

A little over three weeks into the talks between the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) and the International Cricket Council (ICC) regarding the former’s request to relocate Bangladesh’s T20 World Cup matches from India, where do both parties stand?