His name is Mustafizur Rahman, and he sure knows how to bowl. The left-arm pacer has statistics to back his prowess. He has played 60 Indian Premier League (IPL) games and taken 65 wickets in the Indian Premier League in the last decade. He suddenly finds himself at the centre of a controversy that is now spinning out of the cricketing arena.
A decade ago, Rahman won the ‘Emerging Player of the Tournament’ award but none of that counts. What counts, in 2026, is that he is from Bangladesh, where members of the minority Hindu community have been lynched. The moment news broke of Rahman being bought for Rs 9.2 crore by actor Shah Rukh Khan’s Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR), the decibel was raised—as it so nauseatingly is—on social media and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) lost its nerve and its supine spine.
KKR was forced to let go of the bowler and the BCCI—and the government by extension—now finds that it has been ‘hit wicket’. Bangladesh has not taken kindly to India sourcing the nuances of foreign policy to social media outrage.
The Bangladesh Cricket Board has now stated officially—through youth and sports advisor Asif Nazrul—that its cricket team will not travel to India for the T20 World Cup, scheduled to begin in the first week of February. It wants to play the four matches against India in Sri Lanka.