Former India captain Sunil Gavaskar indirectly slammed English pundit Nasser Hussain for his ‘jaundiced’ remark on the Pakistan boycott controversy.
Hussain, in a Sky Sports show, said he was loving Bangladesh ‘sticking to their guns’ but standing up for Mustafizur Rahman, who was booted out of the IPL, and Pakistan for supporting the Bengalis. He accused the International Cricket Council (ICC) of hypocrisy for not accommodating Bangladesh’s demand to relocate their matches, saying they’d have done the same if India asked for it.
Hussain also called upon the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to realise the ‘responsibility’ that comes with its riches and encourage a more ‘equal’ game.
“Then there are some others, especially from the old powers, for whom India replacing them as the power centre in the world game has never gone down well,” Gavaskar wrote in his column for Sportstar, without naming Hussain. “They were quick to join the noise and ask whether, if India had decided not to play in a country, the ICC would have accepted their position or thrown them out of the tournament,” he said.
“Well, India did say they were not going to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy last year, and the ICC arranged their fixtures in a neutral country, the UAE. India had, however, given notice of their intention not to play in Pakistan long before even the draw was made and the venues were fixed. Every sane person in the world knows there is no way any government in India is going to allow its cricketers to go to Pakistan,” he added.
Gavaskar argued that double standards have long shaped cricket’s power politics. He recalled how Sri Lanka resumed tours of Pakistan after the 2009 terror attack, even though the attackers were never caught, while Pakistan routinely blamed violence on ‘non-state actors’.
He contrasted this with Australia refusing to play in Sri Lanka in 1996 due to genuine security fears, and England skipping Zimbabwe in 2003 for political reasons without consequence. Gavaskar said the ICC has historically protected powerful boards, masking bias as principle, whether in umpiring errors, pitch criticism, or current voting, saying placing blame on the BCCI alone reflected enduring hypocrisy.
