Rajya Sabha MP and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi criticised the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the government for their silence regarding the scheduled T20 World Cup match against Pakistan. Speaking to ANI in New Delhi on February 11, 2026, she questioned why the BCCI was looking to the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and the International Cricket Council (ICC) before deciding whether the match should proceed. \u201cAs they said, that we will not play the match, shouldn\u2019t we have said twice, that we do not want to play the match, with this terrorist country?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The Pakistan Government had instructed its national cricket team to participate in the fixture against defending champions India on February 15 following a briefing by PCB Chairman Mohsin Naqvi to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. This briefing outlined outcomes from discussions between the PCB, ICC, and Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), according to an official statement from the Government of Pakistan.<\/p>\n
Chaturvedi asked why the BCCI, described as \u201cthe most powerful, the richest, the strongest body,\u201d remained silent and deferred to the PCB on the match\u2019s fate. \u201cYou can say that we do not want a match with such people, who terrorise our country,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Pakistan had initially decided to boycott their group-stage match against India in solidarity with Bangladesh, which was removed from the tournament after the ICC declined its request to move venues outside India over security concerns. Bangladesh was replaced by Scotland in the tournament, after the ICC did not agree to Bangladesh\u2019s request following the removal of Kolkata Knight Riders pacer Mustafizur Rahman from the squad due to BCCI instructions amid concerns about minority atrocities in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
Team India is currently in Delhi and will face Namibia on February 12. They are scheduled to play against Pakistan in Colombo on February 15, before travelling to Ahmedabad for their final group-stage game against the Netherlands on February 18.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s T20 World Cup 2026 squad includes captain Suryakumar Yadav, Abhishek Sharma, Tilak Varma, Sanju Samson, Shivam Dube, Ishan Kishan, Hardik Pandya, Arshdeep Singh, Jasprit Bumrah, Harshit Rana, Varun Chakaravarthy, Kuldeep Yadav, Axar Patel, Washington Sundar, and Rinku Singh.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rajya Sabha MP and Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Priyanka Chaturvedi criticised the Board of Control for Cricket in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-473062","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}