India won’t play cricket in Pakistan. We don’t need them to

Ramiz Raja may be the bravest man in world cricket right now, and not by choice but by necessity. In the past 15 years, the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) has pulled off a feat that no other cricket board would even dream of: financially thriving without a bilateral relationship with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). 

Which is why when the BCCI’s secretary Jay Shah, also the son of India’s home minister and Prime Minister Modi’s right-hand man Amit Shah, announced that India would not be travelling to Pakistan for the Asia Cup in 2023, the PCB responded with indignation but not with surprise. Fraught political relations between the two countries means that India has been snubbing Pakistan in the world of cricket for the last decade and a half. This is only the latest insult. The last time the two neighbours played a test series was in December 2007 in India. Since then, other than one short-format bilateral series hosted by India in 2012, the two arch-rivals have exclusively faced off in larger tournaments such as the cricket world cup.  

And this has posed an existential threat to Pakistan cricket. India is the de-facto head honcho in world cricket, controlling the largest streams of revenue in the game, and providing the International Cricket Council (ICC) with an overwhelming majority of its cash-flow. Thanks to this financial muscle, almost every cricket board in the world, including other big fish like England, Australia, and South Africa, depend heavily on the rich spoils that they get from bilateral series with India. On top of this, the BCCI also controls the Indian Premier League (IPL), the tournament that put cricket on the map as a money making sport and which recently sold its media rights for the 2023-27 cycle for a jaw-dropping $6 billion. 

Pakistan’s players neither have invites to play at the IPL, nor have they played a bilateral series with India since 2012. Despite this, Pakistan cricket has persisted. Successive PCB administrations have managed to galvanise efforts like the Pakistan Super League, earn profits, and easily become one of the biggest boards in world cricket after India, England, and Australia. What will be heartening for other boards to see is that Pakistan has proved that you can survive in world cricket without depending on the Indians for the big payout. But how did they do it, and could they be doing more? Profit spoke to sources within the PCB, cricket experts, and Osman Sammiuddin, senior editor of ESPN’s Cricinfo and author of The Unquiet Ones- A History of Pakistan cricket, to unearth the story. 

How big is India

“India is big. And if I’m being honest, no one could really have imagined a world in which a cricket board could survive let alone thrive without playing India if they hadn’t iced Pakistan out the way they did,” says one source close to the Pakistan Cricket Board. Profit reached out to the PCB with a list of questions following Jay Shah’s statement, but the PCB declined to comment citing the sensitivity of the issue. And the issue is sensitive indeed. “This hasn’t been a conscious decision on the part of the PCB to grow without playing India. In fact, different administrations have tried very hard to mend ties and play India in a bilateral series but it has never panned out. That is why we have had to rely on other means to survive and thrive,” they continued. 

They have a point. Playing India is usually the most important part of any cricketing nation’s calendar. According to a recent report published in The Guardian, India’s 10-match tour of South Africa last winter, for instance, was worth £80m to the hosts. Similarly, when India pulled out of a test match in England last year, it left the England Cricket Board (ECB) with a gaping £40 million hole in their finances. Even Australia depends on bilateral series with India, and the two countries play each other more often than any other two teams. 

Some would argue that India has earned this position. Over the years, they have managed to utilise their massive television audience well to turn profitable. Their biggest stroke of genius was the IPL, which pumped large amounts of money into cricket in India and perhaps more importantly proved that cricket as a game could be, as legendary Indian batter Rahul Dravid would put it, a four letter word that begins with S and ends with Y.

{Editor’s note: At a press conference talking about the bowling of the Pakistan team, Dravid described it as “a four letter word beginning in S and ending in Y. The word he was thinking, of course, was sexy.} 

And to be fair it has been a system that works well for other cricket boards as well. Playing India is an easy way to make money. For the ICC as well, India is the biggest source of revenue, by some liberal estimates contributing as much as 80% of the ICC’s overall revenue. The way the financial side of cricket works has a lot to do with this. 

There are two main sources of income for a cricket board. The first is the International Cricket Council (ICC). The ICC hosts international tournaments like the Cricket World Cup and the T20 World Cup or the Champions Trophy, which attract cricket fans from around the world. From these tournaments, through gate receipts, broadcasting rights, and sponsorship deals, the ICC makes billions. In the projections for ICC’s 2015-23 cycle, the council is supposed to make up to $3 billion, which is then distributed through the different cricket boards. Larger boards that bring in larger television audiences like India and Australia get larger shares.

In the current cycle for 2015-2023, the ICC has allotted $117 million for seven cricket boards including Pakistan and Australia. England gets $127 million while India takes the biggest slice of the pie with $371 million. And this is only scratching the surface. The share from the ICC is a drop in the bucket for the BCCI while it makes up for nearly half of the revenue that boards such as the PCB make. After India’s mammoth $6.2 billion broadcasting rights deal for the IPL that made cricket a bigger sport than Major League Baseball and put it right behind America’s NFL. On top of this, in August this year, the ICC confirmed a new, four-year Indian market broadcast partnership with Disney Star. The new contract kicks off in 2024 and runs until the end of 2027. According to the Economic Times of India, Star will pay as much as US$3 billion in total over that period for the rights to ICC events. 

Read more: How to turn the PCB into a lean, mean, business machine

The reality is that broadcast rights for matches involving India are so much more lucrative than anything else in the game that most boards rely on them to subsidise the costs of hosting all the other tours. And this is an empire India has built very deliberately. “This is one area in which the BCCI has really set itself apart from the other boards. No matter who comes in as chairman or when the administration changes, their focus has always been to maximise the money and that has clearly worked,” says Samiuddin. 

With the recent record IPL deal and now the ICC’s broadcast deal for the Indian market, the BCCI will continue to become richer, giving it more ability to exert control over world cricket. It is that financial muscle that India flexes to pull stunts like refusing to come to Pakistan even for a tournament like the Asia Cup. While there are moral arguments to be made and there have been those that have vocally cautioned the India board for their hubris, Pakistan has clapped back against the Indian board and threatened their own presence in cricket’s grandest event, the 50-over world cup that is held every four years. 

India’s ability to exert their will should be a red flag to other cricket boards as well, particularly the ones that are largely dependent on playing India for their revenue. Richer boards like England in particular have tried to replicate similar financial independence and power as India by introducing new innovative tournaments like the hotly debated ‘The Hundred’ which had its inaugural edition recently. However, our of sheer necessity, Pakistan seems to be the only board that has managed to make it work without India and carve its own space and independence in world cricket. 

How did Pakistan do it? 

To its fans, cricket is a beautiful, confusing, frustrating, but ultimately good force in the world. As a sport, its idiosyncrasies are what define it and make you fall in love with it. To the purists, talking about finances in cricket is distasteful and the hold that money has on the game alarming. Yet it is this very money that will help cricket thrive, spread, and become a major world sport.

Boards such as the PCB are run as profit making organisations for a reason. They are supposed to make money so that this money can then be spent on the players. The more that is spent on player development, salaries, training and so on the better cricketers we will produce. This will be good for the game, good for the players, and good for the fans. Pakistan has always been a significant member of the global cricketing community, but ever since the terrorist attacks on the Sri Lankan team in 2009 it has been embattled. The incident saw Pakistan blacklisted as a cricket venue where teams like Australia had already been hesitant to visit before the attacks. 

At the same time that Pakistan was serving its time as a pariah, India was embarking on its fairytale journey. A year before the attacks, the IPL was launched and became an instant hit. As India grew in the world of cricket, Pakistan fought for scraps waiting until 2015 to be able to host Zimbabwe. Yet even as all this was happening, Pakistan persisted and decided to form its own franchise league. The Pakistan Super League has been a massive boon for cricket in Pakistan, bringing in much-needed revenue and helping in player development. 

Snubbed by India, Pakistan had no choice but to exert its independence and it has managed to do so with aplomb. And that is why with India pulling out of the Asia Cup that was supposed to happen in Pakistan next year is not as big of a deal financially as one might have thought initially. Yes, the ugliness of politics entering the game is always a bitter sight, but it is not the end of the world. 

“Pakistan has been living this reality since 2008, so it isn’t that big of a deal anymore. The way I’ve started looking at it is that Pakistan has shown there is a way to thrive without playing against India. Most boards think you aren’t making money if you aren’t playing India. We aren’t one of the biggest boards in the world, but we are easily the fourth biggest and that is without any bilateral ties with India,” Samiuddin tells Profit. “During this time the PCB built the PSL. The board makes money off of it, and for a while now Pakistan’s accounts have been showing a net profit. This is the status quo for Pakistan and they’ve made it work.” 

With the PSL, the board makes money not just through the broadcast, but also through the fees that franchise owners pay them. The PSL has become worth around $300 million to the PCB. Thanks to this, in 2021, the PCB declared an after tax profit of Rs 3.8 billion. The cricket board’s reserves back then stood at Rs.17.08 billion compared to PKR 13.28 billion in the 2018-19 financial year. Other than the net profit, the board also saw an increase in income of 108pc, bringing in Rs 10.696 billion through different sources this year compared to the year before..

Read more: Is the PSL good for business? For the PCB, yes. For the teams, not so much. 

“I think the important part here is that this is not the be all and end all for Pakistan cricket. It has been proven that they can do it without India. Ramiz has referenced at different times that the ICC runs on BCCI money, and that Pakistan has remained aloof from this end.” 

What more can we do? 

This is a success story, and it is a story built off many different shoulders. The PSL was launched, built, and reorganised under three different chairmen for example. During the course of that there were many issues. Games of musical chairs were regularly played with the spot of PCB Chairman, and some proved to be more professional commanders than others. The introduction of professional CEOs has also proven at different points to have made a significant impact on the operations of the board. 

Yet while Pakistan Cricket has done well, there are still places it can continue to improve. “I don’t think the PCB has maximised the potential for monetization that the game has in Pakistan. This is a country of 220 to 240 million people and cricket is the only real sport that is followed avidly here. And we know what the real potential is. We saw the bump up when the PSL moved to Pakistan. There were far more sponsors coming in when the matches were at home. Once it moved out of the UAE, the PCB also started getting gate receipts, which might be a small amount but they’re still something and better than paying ground fees,” explains Samiuddin.  

Currently also, the PCB is not working at its full potential particularly because it is stuck in a bad $200 million broadcasting deal with PTV. According to Samiuddin, the deal should be worth much more and the PCB should negotiate a better one when this cycle ends. “The last broadcast deal they had, well the major one before this current one with PTV at least, was worth $150 million and was signed with Ten Sports. And of course it did not come to that amount because the India series did not happen and that series was something like 70% of the whole deal, but that much money 10 years ago compared to the deal with the PTV now is a pretty big difference. If you had kept a normal trajectory, and the broadcast market had developed then a $250-250 million deal over five to six years would be a game changing amount. For all the money that the PCB is making, there is a lot more that can be made,” he explains.

“There is a lot more that can be done. I think the full potential of the PSL has not been tapped as of yet. Ramiz has overlooked that. He has focused a lot on the Pakistan Junior League for example, but you know that isn’t going to make you any money. And you really need to push that. The one big tragedy has again been the big series at home where they have not been able to maximise the broadcast value because of the PTV deal. Australia, England, whenever New Zealand comes over they were rich opportunities but haven’t quite been taken entirely because of this not so lucrative deal.” 

Why we should still want to play India

“We have managed to not just keep afloat but do pretty well,” says the earlier mentioned source close to the PCB who spoke on the condition of anonymity.  “That does not mean we don’t want to play India. We may have proven that we are independent from the hold that India has on other boards, but it is still some level of handicap. We’ve developed strong pillars, but better ties with India will benefit our cricket at the end of the day.” 

There is very little doubt about this. India is a massive market, but so is Pakistan. Combined, India-Pakistan matches are some of the most highly viewed events in global entertainment with television audiences of more than a billion people regularly tuning in and breaking television ratings records. Of course, some of this does have to do with the fact that there has been much less cricket between the two countries in the past 15 years, but the potential of regular Indo-Pak fixtures is astounding. 

“I do remember distinctly that back in the day when they were playing more regularly there were voices saying that the two teams were playing each other too much and that it was getting tiring, but this is India and Pakistan at the end of the day. Ultimately, you want to play India. They got The Rock to do a promo for the most recent match for god’s sake. The most tangential of fans will also tune in for an India-Pakistan match. And when they do play that does happen and people make money off of it,” says Samiuddin. 

Ultimately, you do want to play against India. It is good for the game and it is good for the coffers. And perhaps, even more importantly, with all major countries touring Pakistan, India is the only major hold-out in the complete return of cricket to Pakistan. While it is happening for political reasons outside of the control of the two cricketing bodies, it would be best for both sides to get on with it. “The PCB has never made a big deal out of this because they do not want this to be a permanent situation. They haven’t made a fuss at any ICC meetings and that is because you want to play them at the end of the day,” Samiuddin continues. 

Playing India is important. As we’ve seen, it isn’t necessary. Not for Pakistan and definitely not for India. But mawkish as it may be to say this, Pakistan versus India is an essential component in what makes cricket the beautiful game that it is. At the centre of this game are the men and women who play it and those that spectate, watching on as the sport toys with their emotions. Dizzying jubilation one day and abysmal horrors on other days. For all of them — the fans and the players who make cricket what it is, it is best for India and Pakistan to play more and for all teams to have an equal opportunity. Such utopian dreams, of course, are just that — dreams. But a first step in the right direction is not the worst idea in the world.