That’s not cricket: How ‘creeping Hindutva’ stumped sportsmanship ahead of the T20 World Cup

In 1993, a rising star kicked off a legendary Bollywood career with back-to-back megahits in Darr and Baazigar, where he introduced audiences to the concept of the ‘anti-hero’. Thirty-three years later, it led to Bangladesh being expelled from a World Cup. If this paragraph makes no sense to you, there are some crucial details that need to be unpacked to make this connection clear. But at the heart of this story is one disturbing new reality — international cricket today has become a tool of India’s ruling Hindutva regime. From Mustafizur’s ouster to Bangladesh’s expulsion Let’s begin with the basic details. On January 2, a member of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Sangeet Som,...