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Gavaskar Stands His Ground
Sunil Gavaskar, one of the greatest batsmen India has ever produced, finds himself at the center of a fierce cricketing and political controversy in March 2026 — and rather than retreating, he is doubling down on every word he has said. The storm began with a single column and has now grown into one of the most debated episodes in recent Indian cricket history.
The Column That Started Everything
Writing in his regular column for Mid-Day, Gavaskar slammed Sunrisers Leeds, the English Hundred franchise owned by India’s Sun Group, for signing Pakistan spinner Abrar Ahmed at the 2026 Hundred auction for £190,000 — approximately INR 2.35 crore. His words were unambiguous and immediately incendiary. He argued that when an Indian-owned franchise pays a Pakistani cricketer, that player pays income tax to the Pakistani government, and that tax revenue ultimately funds the purchase of arms and weapons. His conclusion was stark: such transactions “indirectly contribute to the deaths of Indian soldiers and civilians”.
Gavaskar also provided context for why the signing was notable. He noted that Sunrisers Leeds originally targeted England leg-spinner Adil Rashid and only turned to Abrar Ahmed after missing out on him — making the Pakistan spinner something of a second-choice acquisition rather than a deliberate statement of intent. Still, Gavaskar maintained that the identity of the owner makes the transaction morally significant. Since the 2008 Mumbai attacks, IPL franchises have unanimously avoided signing Pakistani players, and he argued that the same ethical consistency should apply to Indian-owned teams operating in foreign leagues.
Who Is Abrar Ahmed?
Abrar Ahmed is a Pakistani mystery spinner who became one of the most talked-about bowling talents to emerge from Pakistan in recent years. He is particularly effective during powerplays with his variations of googly, off-break, and carrom ball, and his signing by Sunrisers Leeds made him the first Pakistani cricketer to be picked by an Indian-owned franchise in The Hundred competition. The Hundred, England’s franchise cricket tournament, has no restrictions on Pakistani players unlike the IPL, which banned them following the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. His £190,000 auction price and his quality as an international bowler made the signing commercially logical for Sunrisers Leeds, but it was the Indian ownership of the franchise that gave Gavaskar the trigger to intervene.
Azeem Rafiq Fires Back
The first major public pushback came from Azeem Rafiq, the Pakistan-born England cricketer who became internationally known for exposing institutional racism in English cricket. Rafiq called Gavaskar’s remarks “ridiculous” and “disgusting,” and did not mince words in his public response. He labelled Gavaskar’s argument as crossing a line that conflates sporting participation with political violence, and his reaction ensured the controversy went global rather than remaining a purely subcontinental debate. Rajeev Shukla, a senior BCCI official, separately clarified that the BCCI has no jurisdiction over franchise decisions made in foreign leagues, effectively distancing India’s cricket board from the entire episode.
The Pakistani Show Allegation and Gavaskar’s Defence
What turned this from a one-sided controversy into a full-blown hypocrisy debate was the rapid surfacing of reports that Gavaskar himself had appeared on a Pakistani cricket show — specifically “The Dressing Room” — during the ICC Champions Trophy 2025, where he sat alongside former Pakistan captains Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. The argument from critics was immediate and pointed: if Gavaskar objects to Indian money flowing to Pakistanis, how does he justify lending his prestige and time to a Pakistani production?
Gavaskar responded to this directly and emphatically. “I did not ask nor get paid for the show I did in Dubai,” he stated. His position was that he neither initiated nor received financial compensation for that appearance, making it fundamentally different from a commercial franchise decision to spend £190,000 on a Pakistani player. He also drew a sharp distinction between commentary panels where his presence is arranged by international broadcasters or the ICC — organizations he serves professionally — and a deliberate financial transaction made by an Indian-owned business.
Gavaskar Doubles Down Without Apology
Far from softening his original remarks, Gavaskar expanded his argument and made his intent even clearer in his follow-up statements. “I don’t know about other sports and what they are doing, all I am praying for is that Indians stop paying Pakistanis,” he said. He added that the “reverse has never happened for decades, if ever” — pointing to the fact that no Pakistani-owned cricketing franchise or institution has ever paid an Indian cricketer in a comparable commercial arrangement. His framing was not merely nationalistic sentiment but an argument rooted in financial reciprocity, or the complete lack thereof.
He went further, urging Indian-owned franchises across all global leagues to adopt a consistent position and refrain from signing Pakistani players. This widens the argument beyond The Hundred and places it as a policy prescription for Indian sports ownership globally — a position that will inevitably create friction with franchise cricket’s commercially driven ethos, where the best available player, regardless of nationality, has traditionally been the primary consideration.
The Deeper Question: Sport, Money, and Politics
What makes this controversy genuinely complex is that Gavaskar is not a fringe voice — at 76, he remains arguably the most respected figure in Indian cricket commentary and has enormous cultural weight with Indian audiences. His intervention on Imran Khan, where he recently expressed concern about the jailed former Prime Minister’s deteriorating eyesight and urged humane treatment, shows he is not reflexively hostile to all things Pakistani. His criticism is framed specifically around money, taxation, and the flow of Indian commercial capital to Pakistan’s economy — a position that resonates deeply with a large section of the Indian public, particularly those who have lost family members or know soldiers posted at the border.
The counterargument, which Rafiq and others have raised, is that cricket has historically been one of the few functioning bridges between India and Pakistan, and that conflating a spinner’s franchise fee with national security policy is a dangerous precedent. The BCCI’s own clarification that it holds no authority over foreign league decisions suggests that even within Indian cricket’s institutional framework, there is discomfort with how far this line of argument extends. Whether Gavaskar’s remarks accelerate a broader informal ban on Pakistani players in Indian-owned franchises across global leagues — or whether they fade as another controversial column in a long and distinguished career — remains to be seen as The Hundred 2026 approaches its July start.