No PSL, no IPL

It is rare for a country to spoil three major sporting events in less than a year. How exactly did India manage this feat? Back in December 2025, the BCCI refused to send its players to Pakistan for the then upcoming 2025 ICC Champions Trophy, citing some ‘security risks’. Its excuse was nothing more than just that, evidenced by the fact that all the other teams participating in the tournament had no qualms about playing in Pakistan. And yet, the ICC meekly consented to India’s unfair demands and their games were played in the UAE. As it happens, India reached the finals of the tournament, robbing host nation Pakistan of its chance to host a prestigious tournament final and the cricketing world of a better and more meaningful spectacle. Now, India’s brazen attacks on Pakistan following the Pahalgam incident have prompted the PCB to indefinitely postpone PSL X. The decision was reached after Thursday’s game between Peshawar Zalmi and Karachi Kings was postponed after a drone fell close to the Rawalpindi stadium. The PCB chairman rightly condemned India’s targeting of a sports stadium as ‘extremely irresponsible and dangerous’. Hopefully this does not mean that the tournament will be cancelled all together and can resume once hostilities cease.

India blaming Pakistan for the Pahalgam attack is just as baseless as the ‘security concerns’ it brought up prior to the Champions trophy. However, this time, India has not come out unscathed. Its own marquee T20 league, the IPL, has been suspended due to its ongoing military confrontation with Pakistan. This is how one ruins three major sports tournaments in less than a year. If India was arrogant enough to assume that it could attack Pakistan and target the PSL without putting its own people and tournament in danger, it suggests that Indian policymakers have grossly underestimated Pakistan and overestimated their own capabilities. Perhaps they have drunk their own Kool-Aid and began thinking like their mouthpieces in the Indian legacy and social media, who are pushing the ridiculous claim that Pakistan is helplessly falling apart before India’s assault. But aside from its hubris, India’s decision to attack Pakistan while several international players and other guests were present in both countries shows a remarkable level of callousness.

India’s claims of being a tolerant, responsible nation that is open to the world have always been dubious. In the PM Modi era they are pretty much unsustainable. India has now shown that it is willing to endanger and even target major international events, jeopardising the safety of locals and foreigners alike, all for the sake of its petty, jingoistic claims. Its actions demonstrate that it is far from a responsible power and totally unready to be a hegemon, as it so clearly desires. Perhaps it has seen the way others have gotten away with spreading bloodshed across the Middle East and considers itself in the same league as them. Sadly, international authorities have been as helpless in holding India to account as they have been in restraining Israel. With a complacent international order and a bellicose India increasingly divorced from reality, the future does not look bright for the South Asia region.