ICC to replace Bangladesh at T20 World Cup if they don't travel to India

The ICC has given the BCB one more day to confer with the Bangladesh government and decide whether their team will travel to India to play the 2026 T20 World Cup. If Bangladesh stick to their refusal to play in India out of security concerns, the ICC Board has decided to replace them with Scotland - based on team rankings - in the tournament.

The decision was taken at an ICC Board meeting on Wednesday where the majority of directors voted in favour of a replacement if Bangladesh didn't budge. Of the 15 directors present, it is understood only Pakistan backed the BCB. The meeting was called after the PCB wrote to the ICC and other boards on Tuesday stating it supported the BCB's position.

The board meeting was attended by the directors of all Full Members. Apart from the ICC chair Jay Shah, the participants included BCB president Aminul Islam, BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia, SLC president Shammi Silva, PCB chairman Mohsin Naqvi, CA chairman Mike Baird, Zimbabwe Cricket president Tavenga Mukuhlani, CWI president Kishore Shallow, Cricket Ireland chair Brian MacNeice, Cricket New Zealand representative Roger Twose, ECB chair Richard Thompson, CSA representative Mohammed Moosajee and Cricket Afghanistan chairman Mirwais Ashraf.

Two Associate Member directors Mubashshir Usmani and Mahinda Vallipuram, ICC CEO Sanjog Gupta, ICC deputy chairman Imran Khawaja and ICC's general manager Gaurav Saxena were also in attendance. ICC ACU head Andrew Ephgrave, who was in Dhaka last week to have in-person meetings with BCB to assuage the security concerns, was part of the meeting too.

"The decision was taken after considering all security assessments conducted, including independent reviews, all of which indicated there was no threat to Bangladesh players, media persons, officials and fans at any of the tournament venues in India," the ICC said in a statement following the board meeting.

"The ICC Board noted that it was not feasible to make changes so close to the tournament and that altering the schedule under the circumstances, in the absence of any credible security threat, could set a precedent that would jeopardise the sanctity of future ICC events and undermine its neutrality as a global governing body.

"The ICC management also engaged in a series of correspondences and meetings with the BCB in a bid to resolve the impasse, sharing detailed information on the event security plan, including layered federal and state law-enforcement support."

The ICC's decision follows weeks of uncertainty over Bangladesh's participation in the T20 World Cup after the BCB, in coordination with the Bangladesh government, wrote to the ICC on January 4 to state they would not be sending their team to India due to security concerns. They asked instead to play their games in Sri Lanka, the event co-hosts. That move was in response to the BCCI instructing Kolkata Knight Riders to release Bangladesh fast bowler Mustafizur Rahman from their squad for IPL 2026, though no specific reason was given for that directive.

Since then, the BCB and the Bangladesh government have maintained that Bangladesh will not travel to India and want to play in Sri Lanka instead. During interactions with the ICC last week, BCB had also requested if Bangladesh's group could be swapped with a team like Ireland, which is playing all their group matches in Sri Lanka. The ICC rejected that request.

"Over the past several weeks, the ICC has engaged with the BCB in sustained and constructive dialogue, with the clear objective of enabling Bangladesh's participation in the tournament," the ICC said. "During this period, the ICC has shared detailed inputs, including independent security assessments, comprehensive venue-level security plans and formal assurances from the host authorities, all of which consistently concluded that there is no credible or verifiable threat to the safety or security of the Bangladesh team in India.

"Despite these efforts, the BCB maintained its position, repeatedly linking its participation in the tournament to a single, isolated and unrelated development concerning one of its player's involvement in a domestic league. This linkage has no bearing on the tournament's security framework or the conditions governing participation in the ICC Men's T20 World Cup.

"The ICC's venue and scheduling decisions are guided by objective threat assessments, host guarantees, and the tournament's agreed terms of participation, which apply uniformly to all 20 competing nations. In the absence of any independent security findings that materially compromise the safety of the Bangladesh team, the ICC is unable to relocate fixtures. Doing so would carry significant logistical and scheduling consequences for other teams and fans worldwide, and would also create far-reaching precedent-related challenges that risk undermining the neutrality, fairness, and integrity of ICC governance."

Bangladesh are in Group C at the T20 World Cup and are scheduled to play their first three games in Kolkata on February 7, 9 and 14 and the final one in Mumbai on February 17.