Team India’s six-match white-ball tour of Bangladesh has reportedly run into fresh trouble after the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) put the invites for media rights of the series on hold, Cricbuzz has reported.
Cricbuzz had previously reported in early July that the broadcast and digital media rights to the series were put up for sale by the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB). The BCB requested expressions of interest for the home internationals in 2026 and 2027 in a letter to the Indian broadcasters, specifically mentioning the 2026 India tour.
However, on July 14, Cricbuzz revealed in a fresh report that the series appears to have been pushed to the back burner, with the BCB seemingly putting the process on hold.
The tender stated that the EOI document will be available in the BCB office from July 2, and interested parties should submit the bid by July 22. However, the BCB had not put out the Expression of Interest (EoI) documents, leaving interested broadcasters - mainly in India - wondering whether the series would happen at all.
"We have not issued the EoI documents because there has been a slight change in plans. We are now assessing the market before inviting bids. It is not true that we are withholding the EoI documents because of the India series,” a BCB source told Cricbuzz in Dhaka.
Amongst the many theories doing the rounds as to why the process has been paused abruptly, one speculates that the BCCI was not pleased with the BCB for putting up the media rights for sale without consulting with them first. Another thinks that the two boards' representatives may have had conversations while they were in Edinburgh, Scotland, for the ICC Annual Conference.
The itinerary for the India series was actually made public by the BCB a while back, and it called for three T20Is and ODIs each to be played between August 1 and August 13.
The diplomatic tension between the two nations, especially last year, has always cast a shadow over the series. But when India named Dinesh Trivedi as its ambassador to Bangladesh last month, expectations were elevated. The hope was heightened by the ambassador's career as a politician rather than a diplomat.
(Cricbuzz inputs)
