Sports and politics have rarely been strangers. Sport has long served as a stage for protest, solidarity, rivalry, goodwill and diplomacy, conveying messages more powerful than official communiqués. Few fixtures illustrate this intersection more sharply than an India-Pakistan cricket match. Played against a backdrop of border tensions, layered histories and national sentiments, it is rarely just a game.
When Pakistan initially refused to play India weeks before the T20 World Cup, despite the match being shifted out of India at the PCB’s request, the decision carried not only symbolic weight but contractual implications. The question was whether the PCB could avoid liability under its participation agreement with the ICC, or whether the doctrine of force majeure could come to its rescue?
In contract law, force majeure excuses performance only where it becomes legally or practically impossible due to events beyond a party’s control. The PCB had reportedly claimed that the Government of Pakistan declined permission to play against India, and that the decision was beyond its control. Although ICC participation agreements are not public, a report by ESPN suggested that members had unconditionally committed to play all scheduled fixtures, with government orders falling within the force majeure clause.
Can One Match Be Severed from the Tournament?
The PCB had intended to seek defence under the force majeure clause; however, the difficulty lay in the fact that the alleged prohibition was opponent-specific and not tournament-wide, as in the case of Bangladesh. The PCB remained willing to play every other match except for one. This raised a central question: whether the PCB could seek discharge from performing part of the contract or whether such refusal would amount to a breach of the agreement with ICC?
Disputes concerning the ICC are generally governed by English law (Clause 2.1), under which force majeure may apply to divisible parts of the contract, allowing the remainder of the contract to survive where the agreement is properly construed as divisible. This is what the PCB would have attempted to demonstrate: that under the MPA, each match constituted a distinct and severable obligation within a larger contractual framework. Following the reasoning in Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines v. Steamship Mutual Underwriting Association (Bermuda) Ltd [2010], the PCB would likely have argued that because the “remainder of the contract is capable of performance,” the force majeure event only suspends the specific “unlawful” obligation (the India match) rather than triggering a total breach of the tournament agreement. It had refused to perform only that portion of the agreement allegedly rendered unlawful by the government order.
The PCB would have sought reliance on similar instances where governmental prohibitions had previously affected participation in international cricket, including when the BCCI relied on force majeure when the government had prohibited the women’s team from playing against Pakistan in the ICC Women’s Championship (a bilateral series).
Conversely, the ICC’s position would have been that the agreement required participation in the tournament as an integrated whole, and was not divisible into a series of isolated obligations. Drawing from frustration principles in Davis Contractors Ltd. v. Fareham UDC [1956] and the doctrine of repudiatory breach in Hong Kong Fir Shipping v. Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd. [1962], the ICC would have contended that the India-Pakistan fixture is not commercially incidental but fundamental to the contract’s core purpose. Its removal could render performance radically different from what had been undertaken, or deprive the ICC substantially of the commercial benefit of the agreement, making the contract difficult to treat as severable.
The commercial architecture of the tournament reinforced this position. Fixtures are structured to secure high-revenue encounters, and the India–Pakistan match is the only Group A fixture between two Full Members. Its removal would therefore have deprived the group stage of its principal commercial and competitive centrepiece.
The “But For” Test and the Problem of Institutional Overlap
Both sides had recently played each other in ICC and Asia Cup tournaments at neutral venues, pursuant to an understanding that neither would host the other. No material geopolitical event appears to have intervened thereafter. The more significant hurdle for the PCB, however, was the strict requirement of causation: absent a genuinely supervening event, the ICC could have argued that the refusal lacked legal compulsion and was instead commercially motivated.
The fact that the PCB is headed by the Interior Minister of the Pakistan Government highlighted the institutional proximity between the Board and the Government. Under English law, a party invoking force majeure must demonstrate that the alleged supervening event was the sole and effective cause of its non-performance. As established by the Court of Appeal in Classic Maritime Inc v. Limbungan Makmur SDN BHD [2019] and Seadrill Ghana v. Tullow Ghana [2018], the “but-for” test is applied strictly: if the PCB would have refused to play for other reasons (such as political solidarity with Bangladesh or commercial leverage), the government order cannot be used as a shield. As clarified in Seadrill, where non-performance is attributable to two concurrent causes, one qualifying and the other non-qualifying, the force majeure defence fails.
The enquiry therefore centred on whether, but for the governmental prohibition, the PCB would have taken the field. The institutional overlap between the Board and the Government, wherein the Interior Minister serves as the head of PCB, complicated the characterisation of the prohibition as a wholly supervening event. If it were shown that the governmental prohibition was not entirely external but arose within the same institutional sphere as the PCB, this defence would have become vulnerable, as English law does not permit reliance on a supervening event that is self-induced.
Foreseeability and the Limits of Force Majeure
Force majeure clauses are construed narrowly, particularly where the alleged disruption falls within risks inherent in the contractual landscape. The volatile relationship between India and Pakistan is a “known known.” English courts may treat risks foreseeable in their general nature as contractually allocated, depending on the construction of the clause. By signing the participation agreement while knowing the geopolitical climate, the PCB may be deemed to have accepted the risk of governmental intervention.
A binding governmental prohibition undoubtedly strengthened the PCB’s position. Yet under English law, force majeure is not a broad escape, but a narrowly construed contractual defence. The defence requires strict proof of causation and externality, and not mere political discomfort. The PCB would need to establish that the governmental order was the effective cause of non-performance and that, but for that order, it remained a bona fide participant. When participation in the tournament as a whole remained viable, and similar geopolitical tensions had previously been managed through neutral venues, the selective non-performance of a commercially central fixture sat uneasily with the doctrine’s rationale.
The episode ultimately illustrates that force majeure excuses what is genuinely prevented. It does not sit comfortably with what is selectively resisted and later rendered possible.