The International Cricket Council (ICC) made the decision to replace Bangladesh with Scotland at next month’s T20 Men’s World Cup following the Bangladesh Cricket Board’s (BCB) refusal to travel to India.
According to reports, the ICC recently sent an email to the BCB informing them of the decision, after the BCB indicated that the Bangladesh government had not granted permission to travel to India for the tournament, which is being co-hosted by Sri Lanka and India from Feb. 7 to March 8.
The ICC also reportedly informed its board members via email of the decision.
“The BCB is not agreeable to playing the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 per the match schedule with their matches in India. We are, therefore, going ahead with the Board decision to replace Bangladesh in the tournament,” the email stated.
The decision came following an emergency meeting of the ICC via video conference, during which the majority of the directors voted to replace Bangladesh if it did not agree to play in India and continued to insist on moving its matches to Sri Lanka.
Following the meeting, the ICC said its board had agreed it would not be “feasible” to change the tournament schedule “so close” to the start date.
The ICC board also believed that altering the schedule in the “absence of any credible security threat” for teams in India could “set a precedent that would jeopardize the sanctity of future ICC events and undermine its neutrality as a global governing body.”
Bangladesh was drawn in Group C with West Indies, England, Nepal, and Italy, and were scheduled to play their first three matches in Kolkata and the fourth one in Mumbai – games that will now be played by Scotland instead.
The issue arose after the BCCI instructed Kolkata Knight Riders to release Mustafizur Rahman from their IPL 2026 squad on Jan. 3. No reason was given, but it came amid deteriorating relations between India and Bangladesh.
However, the ICC rejected the Mustafizur issue as a valid concern, saying the BCB was “repeatedly linking its participation in the tournament to a single, isolated and unrelated development concerning one of its players’ 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.”
