After weeks of social media outrage and extreme verbal attacks from India's religious leaders, Shah Rukh Khan and Kolkata Knight Riders can finally breathe easy. On Saturday (January 3), the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) instructed KKR to release Bangladesh's Mustafizur Rahman from their IPL 2026 squad.
The decision comes in the aftermath of strong warnings from senior religious leaders in India, threatening KKR and Shah Rukh for acquiring Mustafizur at the IPL 2026 Auctions. The Bangladesh left-arm seamer was purchased for a huge price of Rs 9.20 crore and was expected to play a key part in KKR's pace bowling department.
However, the extreme levels of violence against Hindus in Bangladesh had sent shockwaves across the world with India in particular reacting strongly to the unfortunate lynching events. In such a scenario, Mustafizur's signing was bound to invite criticism but KKR and Shah Rukh had to cop unfair criticism for the last few weeks. The most common question asked is - why didn't they drop Mustafizur earlier?
The answer is that neither Shah Rukh nor his KKR franchise had the right to exclude Mustafizur without an order from the BCCI. That is how the guidelines of IPL auctions work. Once a player is bought by an IPL franchise, either he has to withdraw himself or the BCCI has to take the decision of excluding the player from the upcoming IPL season.
This is a decision that Shah Rukh or KKR couldn't have made on their own. This guideline makes sense, considering that it was the BCCI's decision to include Mustafizur in the auction pool and not the Knight Riders' call. Fortunately for Shah Rukh and his team, the BCCI intervened in time to prevent further damage.
