Former England captain Michael Atherton advised the International Cricket Council (ICC) to reconsider “arranging” fixtures between India and Pakistan following the events of the Men’s Asia Cup.
The eight-team tournament concluded on September 28 with India defeating Pakistan in the summit clash; however, the tournament will always be remembered for all the wrong reasons. Bad blood spilt over to the cricket pitch between the two teams in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor. The first flashpoint came on September 14, when India, led by Suryakumar Yadav, refused to shake hands with their Pakistani counterparts.
This was followed by Haris Rauf, Faheem Ashraf and Sahibzada Farhan making controversial and provocative gestures during the Super 4s match against India. The competition concluded with India refusing to accept the trophy from Pakistan’s Interior Minister, Mohsin Naqvi, who is also the chairman of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) and the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB).
In his column for The Times, Atherton wrote that there might be economic and diplomatic reasons for scheduling matches between India and Pakistan in ICC events, but the time has come to end this phenomenon due to the deteriorating relations between the two countries.
“Despite 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 – roughly $3 billion for the most recent rights cycle in 2023-27,” he wrote.
“Due 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,” he added.
It is worth noting that India and Pakistan have faced each other at every ICC event held since 2013.
‘ICC events should be transparent’
In the Asia Cup 2025 edition, India and Pakistan played each other three times, with the former coming out on top all the time. However, Atherton reckons that the cricketing ties between the two countries have now “clearly become a proxy for broader tensions”. He also criticised the ICC for arranging “tournament fixtures” between these two teams for their economic benefit.
“If 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 need,s and now that the rivalry is being exploited in other ways, there is even less justification for it,” Atherton wrote.
“For the next broadcast rights cycle, the fixture draw before ICC events should be transparen,t and if the two teams do not meet every time, so be it,” he added.