The ICC's own rules ban government interference in cricket boards — but it only acts when the boards themselves complain. In Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, that's a problem.
The ICC's constitutional document is unambiguous: every cricket board must run its affairs autonomously, free from government interference. It sounds like a solid principle, the kind of rule that should give cricket governance real teeth. The problem is in how the ICC chooses to enforce it, which is to say, barely at all.
The enforcement mechanism the ICC relies on is deeply flawed. Rather than acting on what it can plainly observe, the ICC waits for the affected board to write in and formally declare that its government has been interfering. No complaint letter, no action. It's a rule that protects itself from ever having to be used.
It's like a policeman watching a theft happen and saying, "Well, the shopkeeper didn't file a report, so I'm not going to do anything."
In Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, governments have dissolved their respective cricket boards and appointed interim committees in their place. This hasn't happened in secret. It has been reported widely, discussed openly, and is, as Faisal Hasnain puts it, "as clear as daylight." The ICC board of directors, those member representatives who carry a fiduciary duty of care to world cricket, has responded with complete silence. Not even a statement acknowledging that something significant has occurred.
Selective governance isn't just bad policy. It's a signal to every government that interference carries no real cost.
When the ICC is invoked here, the target is specific: the board of directors, the individuals who represent member nations and who are legally and ethically obligated to act in the interests of world cricket. That duty of care isn't satisfied by waiting for a formal complaint that, by design, cannot easily come from a board that has already been dissolved or replaced by government appointees. A board under political control is hardly in a position to write a protest letter to the ICC about that same political control.
"No government interference" — ICC constitutional document
The ICC's posture here is selective governance, and selective governance is not governance at all. If the rules only apply when the victims self-report, they protect no one. Cricket in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka deserves better, and so does the broader principle that cricket boards should be able to function independently of political pressure. If the ICC continues to look away when the evidence is this visible, the signal it sends to every government with an interest in its national cricket board is that interference carries no real cost.
That's the direction cricket is heading, and it's the wrong one.
