{"id":17754,"date":"2025-10-05T18:26:23","date_gmt":"2025-10-05T18:26:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/05\/ex-eng-captain-wants-icc-action-against-ind-pak-matches-proxy-for-propaganda-cricket-news\/"},"modified":"2025-10-05T18:26:23","modified_gmt":"2025-10-05T18:26:23","slug":"ex-eng-captain-wants-icc-action-against-ind-pak-matches-proxy-for-propaganda-cricket-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/05\/ex-eng-captain-wants-icc-action-against-ind-pak-matches-proxy-for-propaganda-cricket-news\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-ENG Captain Wants ICC Action Against IND-PAK Matches: ‘Proxy For Propaganda’ | Cricket News"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Michael Atherton urges ICC to make tournament draws transparent, questioning repeated India-Pakistan matches driven by economic and political motives after Asia Cup controversies.<\/h2>\n
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India beat Pakistan to win Asia Cup 2025 (PTI Photo)<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Former England captain Michael Atherton has asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to bring more transparency to its tournament draw system, even if it means fewer India-Pakistan matches. He believes that the sport has slyly and deliberately oriented itself to arrange more games between the rivals in international tournaments for commercial reasons, but it\u2019s no longer \u2018justified\u2019 after the debacles in the 2025 Asia Cup.<\/p>\n

There were several controversies at the men\u2019s Asian tournament, with thinly veiled political statements in abundance, all in light of the Pahalgam terror attack and the border scuffles between the countries. The two teams were backed by their boards, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB), with both organisations certainly carrying political baggage.<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite its scarcity (maybe, in part, because of its scarcity) it is a fixture that carries huge economic clout, one of the main reasons why the broadcast rights for ICC tournaments are worth so much \u2014 roughly $3 billion for the most recent rights cycle (in) 2023-27,” Atherton wrote in his column for The Times<\/em> newspaper. \u201cDue to the relative decline in the value of bilateral matches, ICC events have grown in frequency and importance, and so the India and Pakistan fixture is crucial to the balance sheets of those who would not otherwise have any skin in the game.”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been ages since India and Pakistan were not in the same group at an ICC event. Unlike other sports and sporting tournaments, the ICC rarely explains how it picks the groups.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s considered an open secret that the World Body makes sure the two teams are in the same group so as to have at least one India-Pakistan match in every tournament, with chances of a second in the semi-final\/final. The Asia Cup takes it to extremes, with a format and groups arranged to get three of these matches in less than a month \u2014 which is what materialised in the latest edition.<\/p>\n

For the Asian Cricket Council (ACC), the revenues earned from these games are crucial to fund grassroots cricket in the region, making the issue quite complicated.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf cricket was once the vehicle for diplomacy, it is now, clearly, a proxy for broader tensions and for propaganda. There is little justification, in any case, for a serious sport to arrange tournament fixtures to suit its economic needs and now that the rivalry is being exploited in other ways, there is even less justification for it. For the next broadcast rights cycle, the fixture draw before ICC events should be transparent and if the two teams do not meet every time, so be it,” Atherton added.<\/p>\n

First Published:<\/span><\/p>\n
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October 05, 2025, 23:54 IST<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

News<\/a> cricket<\/a> Ex-ENG Captain Wants ICC Action Against IND-PAK Matches: ‘Proxy For Propaganda’<\/span><\/div>\n
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Last Updated:October 05, 2025, 23:54 IST Michael Atherton urges ICC to make tournament draws transparent, questioning repeated India-Pakistan matches driven by economic and political motives after Asia Cup controversies. India beat Pakistan to win Asia Cup 2025 (PTI Photo) Former England captain Michael Atherton has asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to bring more transparency…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cricket"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tezgyan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}