Will Mustafizur Rahman participate in IPL 2026? BCB breaks silence on calls to exclude KKR pacer

Since being sold for a massive amount of INR 9.2 crore by the Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) in the 2026 season’s auction of the Indian Premier League (IPL), Bangladesh’s left-arm pacer, Mustafizur Rahman, has been in uncertainty about playing the next season amid the growing demands from the Indian politicians and links to politics.

The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) president, Aminul Islam, has emphasized the decision and reckoned that the BCB believed in viewing this issue from a cricket perspective. He told the ANI over a phone call from Sylhet that IPL isn’t an ICC cricket event but a domestic tournament. 

See Also: "Why drop Shubman Gill...?"- Yograj Singh slams India's Ajit Agarkar-led selection panel

We will monitor the entire matter until the end, because we are people of cricket. We believe in looking at this issue from the perspective of cricket, not politics. Only one player from Bangladesh is on the Kolkata Knight Riders roster: Mustafizur Rahman.” Aminul Islam expressed over a phone call.

BCB president reacts to Mustafizur Rahman’s IPL 2026 participation

The Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) will use the left-arm pacers as their death over specialist at the Eden Gardens, where he could use the slow deliveries and the yorkers with variations to fox the batters. The franchise has kept Mustafizur as the back-up pacer of Matheesha Pathirana, who is going to do the same job.

“So we will see what happens until the very end; we will monitor it till the end. We always encourage the game of cricket. India is our neighboring country, and we have a very good cricketing relationship with them--a very good cooperative relationship in cricket.” The BCB president reflected on the situation.

Kolkata Knight Riders’ IPL 2026 squad

Ajinkya Rahane, Sunil Narine, Rinku Singh, Angkrish Raghuvanshi, Manish Pandey, Varun Chakravarthy, Ramandeep Singh, Anukul Roy, Rovman Powell, Harshit Rana, Vaibhav Arora, Umran Malik, Cameron Green, Matheesha Pathirana, Mustafizur Rahman, Tejasvi Singh, Finn Allen, Tim Seifert, Rahul Tripathi, Kartik Tyagi, Daksh Kamra, Sarthak Ranjan, Prashant Solanki, Akashdeep, Rachin Ravindra.