Abstract During the Pakistan military's operation in what was then East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh), the Pakistan cricket team faced intense backlash from the Bengali diaspora on a summer tour of Britain in 1971. This article examines how Bengali activists organized a campaign to halt the tour to protest the Pakistan military's atrocities in their homeland, East Pakistan, sparking a broader debate on the causes of the Bangladesh liberation movement in the British press and beyond. By exploring the dynamics of this protest, the article highlights how sport became an impactful platform for political engagement and social justice. Drawing on hitherto unused archival sources, newspaper accounts, and interviews with key people from the period, it argues that the Bengali community's protest of the Pakistan cricket tour not only amplified the cause of Bangladesh's liberation but also brought international substantiation to their struggle. Furthermore, this article situates this campaign within the broader context of the emerging global human rights and civil society movements against repressive regimes in the “long 1970s,” an era when new forms of political activism challenged oppressive regimes during this period of global transition.
Ilyas Chattha (Thu,) studied this question.