Boycott calls rumble ahead of India vs Pakistan – but hundreds of millions still expected to tune in

Calls to boycott the high-profile Cricket World Cup match between India and Pakistan this weekend have been trending online, although people across South Asia are still expected to watch the game in huge numbers.

India’s match against their arch-rivals will take place at Ahmedabad’s Narendra Modi Stadium on Saturday from 2pm, and some cricket fans have threatened on social media to skip the big game because of what they see as Pakistan’s support for terrorism, amid online discussions about whether sports and international relations can be kept apart.

In recent days there have been close to 52,000 posts on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, with the hashtag #BoycottIndoPakMatch.

Some posts referenced recent Indian military operations against separatists in Kashmir, a disputed Himalayan region that both India and Pakistan administrate in part and claim in full.

Others criticised the warm welcome Pakistan’s team have received in India’s Hyderabad city since they arrived – after a row over last-minute visa issues – for the start of the tournament.

“Cricket match is nothing infront of our Soldiers. Enemies are always enemy. Pakistani doesn’t deserve this type of welcome,” wrote one user on X.

India’s cricket authorities recognise that this game is one of the biggest draws of the whole tournament, and have organised a pre-match show on Saturday featuring Bollywood singers Arijit Singh, Shankar Mahadevan, and Sukhwinder Singh. These singers were also criticised as part of the boycott calls, with one user tagging them all before writing “shame on you”.

It is not uncommon for tempers to run high when India and Pakistan face off in cricket. They no longer play regular matches against each other, such is the hostile state of their relations, but occasionally clash at international tournaments.

When Pakistan beat India by 180 runs in the Champions Trophy final in 2017, at least 19 people were arrested in India for shouting “pro-Pakistan and anti-India” slogans. Fifteen men were detained on charges of sedition in the central state of Madhya Pradesh as well as three minors in Uttarkhand province and another in Bihar.

In 2021, several Indians were put behind bars for celebrating Pakistan’s 10-wicket victory over Team India at the T20 World Cup in Australia. A school teacher in Udaipur was arrested because she put her WhatsApp status celebrating Pakistan’s victory.

She was among several Muslims in India who had been arrested or detained for supporting Pakistan, in turn sparking questions about freedom of speech in the world’s largest democracy.

Amidst all the controversies, India vs Pakistan is still seen as one of the great rivalries in the sporting world.

In India the rights to broadcast the World Cup matches this year are held by Star Sports, while Disney + Hotstar has been seeing upwards of 20 million viewers at peak times on its streams of India matches in the tournament so far. There are no estimates yet for how many will tune in for Saturday’s game, but recent meetings between the arch-rivals have had over 400 million recorded viewers.

Tickets for India’s matches at the tournament have been selling in record times, and Saturday’s game will be in front of a sold-out Narendra Modi Stadium, the largest cricket stadium in the world with a seating capacity of 134,000.

When the International Cricket Council (ICC) opened the window for the sale of tickets on 25 August, the tickets for India vs Pakistan were sold out in a span of just a few minutes, leaving thousands of fans disappointed.

Prompted by high demand, ICC and the BCCI earlier this month decided to release 14,000 more tickets for the much-awaited fixture, which were also reportedly sold out less than half an hour after the start of the online sale.