India captain Suryakumar Yadav said his team would travel to Colombo as planned for their T20 World Cup clash against Pakistan, despite their arch rivals' decision to boycott the match.
The Pakistan government directed the team to boycott the February 15 Group A contest to show solidarity with Bangladesh, who were replaced by Scotland following their refusal to tour India over safety concerns.
"Our mindset is clear," said Yadav in a captain's press conference. "We have not refused to play - they have.
"We've booked our flight and we are going."
India, the reigning T20 world champions, are aiming to become the first hosts to win the tournament as well as the first team to win two T20 World Cups in a row.
Pakistan's boycott of the India match would leave them with little margin for error in their bid to reach the Super 8s stage, as only the top two teams from each group in the 20-team tournament advance.
Salma Agha, Pakistan captain, deferred to the judgement of his government, stating that a decision to boycott the game was "not in our control".
"It's a government decision, and we respect that," he said. "Whatever they are going to say, we will do that.
"And then, we have three other games, and we are very excited about that."
Asked what would happen should India and Pakistan meet in a knockout game, Salman said they would follow government advice.
Sri Lanka Cricket has urged Pakistan to reconsider its planned boycott, saying a forfeited match could hit the tourism sector of a country still recovering from an economic collapse.
"We have asked them to reconsider the decision based on the reports we have got," Ashley de Silva, chief executive of Sri Lanka Cricket, said Friday.
He said there could be hits from multiple angles if the boycott goes ahead, because Sri Lanka Cricket has already finalised arrangements for the February 15 match with all security plans in place, hotel bookings and ticket sales complete.
De Silva said that SLC wrote to its counterparts at the Pakistan Cricket Board on the basis of strong cricket relations between the two countries, but declined to provide further details.
Sri Lanka was the first national team to tour Pakistan to revive international cricket there following a long absence of incoming tours. That international suspension stemmed from a 2009 terror attack on the Sri Lanka team's bus in Lahore.
Sri Lanka experienced an unprecedented economic collapse in 2022 and is now under an International Monetary Fund recovery program. Tourism is a key economic lifeline of the island nation.
Former England captains Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussein deemed the boycott a 'crisis' on the Your Site' Cricket Podcast previewing the tournament.
"It's a bit of a crisis for the international game and the world game, actually, because the game is so concentrated in that one area," Atherton said.
"If you've got a situation where India won't go to Pakistan, Pakistan won't go to India, now Bangladesh won't go to to India - lots of global events are there. And these global events are starting to become very compromised.
"We can talk about the more immediate impact, but that's broadly a bit of a crisis for the game."
Hussain likened the decision to one he made as England captain in 2003, to boycott a World Cup game against Zimbabwe in Harare, but remarked that the intersection between cricket and politics has become much more congested in recent years.
"Sport and cricket and politics have always been intertwined and no one knows that better than me," said Hussain.
"I didn't take an England side to the 2003 World Cup game in Zimbabwe. Some of that was down to security. A lot of it was down to the Mugabe regime.
"There's always been a link between sport and politics, but it just seems recently that link is more and more. It used to be the exception. It's now the norm.
"Cricket used to unite nations and countries that were finding difficulties and now it's pushing people apart."
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