When you make infographics and data visualizations for fun¹, especially in sports, predictability and uniformity in the miasma of numbers, dates and matchups being synthesized is the thing you hope for but never fully expect. There’s almost always some kind of odd caveat or quirk in a schedule or stat. And it’s often one that, even if it doesn’t exactly fuck everything up, makes it necessary to add an asterisked aside or addendum to whatever beautiful and clean — or, more likely, already very cluttered — visual landscape you’ve established.

Most of the time, it’s either a bog standard statistical outlier or, as was the case with our PLL calendar for this year’s Championship Series, an intentionally unorthodox tournament layout². In those instances, you usually just ask your much smarter and more knowledgeable friend/subject matter expert, who explains to you whatever dumb ass decision led to you have a lopsided date on your otherwise pristine calendar. Then you go on with your day working in the service journalism content mines with a new problem on which to focus.

It is highly unusual, however, that you come upon something in the process that pulls you out of what I like to call “the zone”³. More often than not those cases involve the death of a participant in whatever longitudinal dataset you’re tracking or the cancellation of a major event on account of an act of God/inclement weather. They basically never involve things like “potential escalation into nuclear war”.

But then you encounter a note like this in the midst of your due diligence:

Which may not, at first, seem like a huge deal. Especially if you’re unfamiliar with what is sometimes euphemistically referred to as “strained diplomatic relations” in the region. But even in that case, a passing appreciation of the role stadium capacities play in the amount of potential revenue available for a given event should alert you to something much deeper at play⁴.

For those that are not computationally inclined, or who would just prefer to not leave this page to do math, we’ve included a handy visual guide to highlight the difference between the two potential sites:

Now, this isn’t to say that R. Premadasa Stadium — named after late Sri Lankan prime minister Ranasinghe Premadasa — is a dump unworthy of a spot on the international cricket stage. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The arena is perhaps the most significant place in all of Sri Lankan cricket⁵ (which is a significant world power in the game, with three T20 World Cup final appearances, including a victory in 2014) and the venue itself has hosted several variations of the Cricket World Cup, including the final of the 2012 edition of this very event.

But it’s not literally the largest stadium⁶ in the entire world. Nor is it even in the primary host country, where five of the eight designated stadiums are for this year’s tournament. So why is there such a massive contingency plan put in place that could potentially cost tournament organizers a share of billions of rupees⁷?

Turns out it has a lot to do with water. Especially how much of it that’s in the Indus River ends up in Pakistan and/or India, specifically. Fed by glaciers from the Himalayan mountains, the river serves as the lifeblood (in a very literal sense) for much of the region. It also passes through India before ever getting to Pakistan and, quite frankly, Pakistanis have not been happy about that since, well, they became Pakistanis.

Nor are they particularly happy about the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi — and yes, he’s the same guy that has his name on the aforementioned largest stadium in the world — whose specific brand of Hindu nationalism may remind at least some of our readers of a certain local politician turned mad king⁸.

This has led to an increased conflict in what was already, essentially⁹, the most contentious region in the world since it was established with the Partition of India in 1947. As recently as May of last year, this simmering tension has boiled over into outright attacks¹⁰, but even before that, neutral sites for potential matches between the two world/cricket powers were deemed necessary, with an agreement in 2024 codified by the International Cricket Council (ICC). And it’s not just Pakistan that’s expressed discomfort with playing in the tournament because of India’s involvement in the tournament’s administration

Bangladesh, after the Bangladeshi Cricket Board (BCB) expressed an unwillingness to play in India for what they cited as “security reasons,” was removed entirely from the proceedings after the ICC rejected its concerns¹² and its request to be swapped with Ireland (who is set to play all of their games in Sri Lanka) was also declined.

This despite support for several other cricketing organizations around the world, including the Pakistani Cricket Board (PCB), which offered to host Bangladesh’s games if Sri Lankan sites were not available. In response to the ban of Bangladesh, Pakistan has (largely through backchannels, though not exactly formally) threatened to boycott their game against India on the 15th. As one of the mega powers of the sport, a full ban of the Pakistani team similar to what happened with Bangladesh seems unlikely.

But it remains highly probable that what would normally be one of the most anticipated sporting events in the entire world this year will just not happen. Not because of a failure on one or another of the participants to live up their end of the bargain on the field, but an inability to accommodate or compromise amidst tensions between nations and states that find themselves in modern continuations of conflicts that stretch back decades, centuries or, in some cases, millennia.

All of which, of course seems pretty insane for a sporting event which should, theoretically, (and at least, for marketing purposes, will claim to) bring people together. But, as we live in a world where we are increasingly forced to engage with people whose lives and opinions we find loathsome or existentially concerning, it’s important that everything we do is political and all of our decisions have consequences.

From the shoes we buy, to the food we eat, to the shows we watch, everything we do is interconnected and has a knock-on effect across the lives of everyone around us. Sometimes the effect is someone finding the logos we wear offensive (or, on the other end, telling us they like our shirt,) and sometimes it’s having to put in preparations to potentially move a final from the world’s largest stadium into Sri Lanka’s version of Fenway Park (complimentary, Go Sox).

Our goal with this newsletter, in general, won’t be for us to exist as a place where politics are at the forefront of everything we talk about, because that’s not what sports are supposed to be about. They are supposed to be about being able to talk to your buddy about what happened in the game last night or how watching the pinnacles of human athletic achievement can make you believe in an idea bigger than yourself. But that doesn’t mean they exist outside of politics entirely, and sometimes that involves having to learn about geography, water management and the effect nuclear proliferation has on civil societies all the way on the other side of the globe to understand why you may not see the best in the world play against each other.

And that’s important to remember too, no matter how wicked the googlies you are watching end up being.

A quick roundup of stray news stories from all over the sporting map:

In this past Wednesday’s episode — going forward, the podcast and this newsletter will be released on the same day, so bear with us in this one instance — we spent a little bit of time talking about Night 1 of the Premier League in anticipation of what we hoped would be an “exciting”¹⁵ night of darts.

Instead, we were both met with considerable issues streaming the event, which was the first on the updated PDC TV app. And we were not the only ones experiencing a great deal of trouble or expressing our displeasure.

Brad and I are in extreme agreement on all points — #FreeSwissPhil — but it’s the last one in particular that we found especially frustrating. While the previous version of the PDC app wasn’t perfect, it definitely got the job done whenever there was any tournament happening at the senior level of darts. It’s hard enough watching darts, especially those event which doesn’t find themselves on Sky Sports¹⁶, including but not limited to majors like the UK Open and not-so-hidden gems like the European Tour.

So when attempts to watch what’s literally (as in the “right there in the name of it”,) the “Premier” showcase of darts outside of the World Championships are rebuffed not by issues on the production end, but the distribution side of things, what you’re putting at risk isn’t just a night or two of entrainment for a group of weirdos hanging out in a group chat somewhere. It’s the expansion of your beloved game into new territories, and with it, the new revenue streams that you’re hoping will accompany them.

In our group alone, one of our friends¹⁷ declared they were glad they weren’t able to sign up for the subscription service to the PDC because they had found a useful alternative in the free streaming options on Pluto.tv.

This isn’t to go off on a rant at the people involved in the inner workings of the app, per se — though, for the love of Jesus, good QA benefits everyone, but especially the dev team on any given software project — but a plea to the people in charge of these decisions and deadlines to please make sure their shit is all the way together before foisting upon unsuspecting weirdos a broken way to watch your show.

And in case you missed it, here’s this past Wednesday’s episode, where we also very briefly got into a discussion about what was written above regarding the T20 World Cup and the controversy therein: