Team India will travel to Sri Lanka for the T20 World Cup, even though Pakistan has confirmed it will skip the February 15 match. ICC rules require India to show up at the R. Premadasa Stadium in Colombo on match day. BCCI Vice-President Rajeev Shukla said the board fully backs the ICC on this. India has no choice but to follow the protocol.
Pakistan will play their other three matches in the tournament. They face the Netherlands on February 7, the USA on February 10, and Namibia on February 18. The Pakistan squad was named weeks ago with all these matches in mind. Only the India game on February 15 will not happen.
What the ICC Rule Says
ICC Playing Conditions Rule 16.2.1 covers this situation. The rule is simple. A team loses a match if they concede defeat or if the match referee decides they refused to play. The match referee then awards the other side the win.
A walkover only happens in one situation. One team must show up for the toss. The other team must fail to appear. If Pakistan does not come to the ground, India wins. India receives two points. Not a single ball needs to be bowled for that to happen.
One thing people get wrong is what happens if both teams skip the match. If neither team shows up, the match gets called off as abandoned. No points go to anyone. But that is not going to happen here. India will be at the ground. Pakistan will not.
What India Must Do on February 15
India cannot just stay in their hotel and wait. The ICC protocol is clear on what the team has to do. India will train as per their normal schedule before the match. Captain Suryakumar Yadav will attend the press conference before the game.
On match day, the team will reach the stadium on time. Suryakumar will present himself for the toss. After that, the match referee takes over. If Pakistan does not walk off, the referee will officially award the match to India. BCCI sources confirmed all of this through ANI on Monday.
Rajeev Shukla kept it short when he spoke to reporters. He said BCCI completely agrees with the ICC and will not comment further until talks with the ICC are done. That means India will not do anything outside the rules.
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This Has Happened Before
This is not the first time a team has refused to play at an ICC event. Back in 2006, Pakistan refused to take the field against England in a Test match. The match referee gave that game to England straight away. Same rule. Same result. Pakistan lost without playing.
That match set a clear example for what happens when a team says no. ICC has followed the same process ever since. The 2006 case also shows that boycotting one match does not stop consequences from coming.
The boycott followed ICC’s decision to remove Bangladesh from the tournament and replace it with Scotland. Pakistan publicly backed PCB’s support for Bangladesh’s position on shifting matches out of India. ICC said no to Bangladesh. Pakistan took that as unfair treatment.
Pakistan captain Salman Ali Agha told the media the players will do whatever the government and PCB tell them. The players did not make this call. The boycott decision was issued by the government of Pakistan and posted on its official social media account. The team found out the same way everyone else did.
India and Pakistan have played eight T20 World Cup matches against each other. India has won seven of those eight games. A walkover on February 15 will add another result to that record without anyone batting.
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