ICC Told To Be Transparent With Tournament Draws After Asia Cup Fallout

Former England captain Michael Atherton has asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to increase transparency in its fixture draws for future mega events. Atherton’s comments come in the wake of the highly charged encounters between India and Pakistan in the Asia Cup 2025.

India and Pakistan no longer play bilateral series, but they are consistently placed in the same group in every ICC tournament. While these matches generate massive revenue and viewership across platforms, their Asia Cup clashes escalated into politically charged confrontations following the Pahalgam terror attack and Operation Sindoor.

India defeated Pakistan three times during the tournament, including in the final, but each encounter sparked fresh controversy. Tensions began in the group stage when the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) filed an official complaint with the ICC, accusing Indian players of violating the spirit of cricket by refusing post-match handshakes. The PCB also demanded the removal of match referee Andy Pycroft, alleging he had advised India captain Suryakumar Yadav to skip the customary handshake at the toss.

Matters intensified during the Super Fours clash, where Haris Rauf and Sahibzada Farhan were seen making provocative gestures toward Indian fans. Haris Rauf and Shaheen Afridi were also involved in heated exchanges with Shubman Gill and Abhishek Sharma.

The final further fueled the tensions. After India claimed the title with a five-wicket victory, the team refused to accept the trophy from Asian Cricket Council (ACC) chief Naqvi. Instead, Naqvi - who also serves as Pakistan’s Interior Minister and PCB chairman - walked away with both the trophy and the medals, later stating that Indian players could collect their prizes from him personally if they wished.

In his column for The Times, Atherton wrote: “Despite its scarcity [maybe, in part, because of its scarcity], it is a fixture that carries huge economic clout, one of the main reasons why the broadcast rights for ICC tournaments are worth so much - roughly $3 billion for the most recent rights cycle in 2023-27.

“Due to the relative decline in the value of bilateral matches, ICC events have grown in frequency and importance, and so the India and Pakistan fixture is crucial to the balance sheets of those who would not otherwise have any skin in the game.

“If cricket was once the vehicle for diplomacy, it is now, clearly, a proxy for broader tensions and for propaganda. There is little justification, in any case, for a serious sport to arrange tournament fixtures to suit its economic needs, and now that the rivalry is being exploited in other ways, there is even less justification for it.

“For the next broadcast rights cycle, the fixture draw before ICC events should be transparent and if the two teams do not meet every time, so be it.”