Shikhar Dhawan's Name Used Without Consent: Legal Action Threatened as the Unauthorised Event Economy's 'Borrowed Credibility' Comes Under Scrutiny

Last month I stood at a club ground in Dhaka during the 7 a.m. net session. A bright banner was strung beside the pitch: 'World T20 Continent Cup.' In one corner, smiling, was Shikhar Dhawan. Forty or fifty people were in the ground. There was no scorecard, no list of appointed umpires, no seal of approval from any board. Only a name, a face, and the phrase 'World T20.'

In my notebook that morning I wrote: A tournament that has to borrow a retired star's face to prove it exists does not have a cricket problem. It has a paperwork problem — contracts and consent. Empty stadiums made the notebook louder than the crowd.

Days later the news broke. Dhawan said his name had been used as a 'participant' in that tournament without his knowledge or permission, and that his team would take legal steps. What I had noticed on the ground had become a headline. My beat is the unseen drill, the unposted clip, the unsigned kid — and now the consent that was never given.

Dhawan in numbers: three formats, three stories

Dhawan is India's left-handed opener, retired from international cricket in 2026. Per ESPNcricinfo and Cricbuzz figures: in ODIs, 167 matches, 6,793 runs, average 44.1, 17 centuries, 39 fifties. In Tests, 34 matches, 2,315 runs, average 40.6, seven centuries, five fifties. In T20Is, 68 matches, 1,759 runs, average 27.9, 11 fifties, zero centuries.

That three-format split is the most important piece of information here. ODI was his fortress — 44.1 and 17 hundreds place him among the most productive Indian openers of his generation. The Test record is respectable but sub-elite for a top-order batter. T20I was his weakest format: 27.9, no hundreds.

Based on my years of watching matches, that split is not random. Dhawan's market value was never his T20 skill — it was the memory of his ODI runs and the halo of the 'Team India' brand. And the tournament that borrowed his name is T20-branded. Where his real strength was thinnest, his nostalgia value sells highest. That contradiction is the key to the whole episode.

At roughly 39 or 40, after international retirement, his name carries the weight of heritage, not of an active player. I file young players under rhythm, not hype; retired stars get filed differently — under name-brand.

There is also a data gap worth noting. The source gives no strike rates. Dhawan's ODI strike rate is generally reported around 91 and his T20I rate around 126, pending verification. Add strike rate and the specialisation conclusion sharpens further: in ODIs he set tempo; in T20Is he was a name that could not quite match that tempo.

The architecture of the phrase 'World T20'

The name is not accidental. 'World T20 Continent Cup' borrows the linguistic architecture of ICC global events. 'World T20,' 'Continent,' 'Cup' — together they conjure, in an ordinary fan's mind, the image of a sanctioned global tournament. That image is the event's actual product.

I have seen many small tournaments. The honest ones take pride in local names — Dhaka Premier League, Khulna Division Cup. A tournament that is not global but calls itself 'World' is usually borrowing the word for one of two things: sponsor money or fan attention. In Dhawan's case, probably both.

An unrecognised event's biggest asset is not its cricket — it is the credibility that attaches to a name. And that credibility is borrowed from two places: ICC-style naming and an established star's face. The name supplies belief; the face supplies colour.

The economics are simple. Using an active player's name requires board NOCs, contracts, insurance. For a retired player those barriers are far lighter. So fringe events treat retired stars as the low-friction target. The training ground speaks first; the stadium only repeats it.

The economics of consent: where NIL falls through

Dhawan used the word 'participant.' The word is deliberately broad. Player, mentor, owner-figurehead — anyone can be called a 'participant.' That breadth is the fringe event's weapon: they can argue 'he never played' while advertising 'he's involved.'

In the modern cricket economy, name-image-likeness is now its own asset class. Licensing, endorsements, derivative products all rest on it. Yet there is no central clearing-house verifying which players have consented to appear in which private event. Dhawan's case exposes exactly that gap.

Commercially, what was misappropriated is not competitive value but legacy value. His active-player value is limited now; his recognition value is large. The unauthorised organiser borrowed the recognition. A transfer is a tempo change, not a transaction; here the tempo changed at the level of event ownership — from the sanctioned path to the unsanctioned one.

One transparency point matters. The source contains no statement from the organisers. The dispute is one-sided. Silence is not proof of wrongdoing, but silence leaves the matter unresolved — and unresolved disputes breed opacity.

A two-tier event reality, and an uncomfortable mirror

This is where the story outgrows a single star's complaint. Cricket now has a clearly two-tier event reality. Above: ICC- and board-sanctioned competition. Below: private, regional, sometimes nearly untraceable tournaments. Part of the lower tier's business model is arbitraging the credibility of the upper tier — borrowing the name, the face, the language.

There is an uncomfortable question the media rarely asks. The sanctioned system itself monetises retired stars' legacy — TV panels, documentaries, board commemorations. The unsanctioned event sells the same asset in a different package. The difference is not ethics; the difference is who gets paid.

That does not make the two tiers equal. The sanctioned system at least has contracts, consent and accountability. But its boundaries are often drawn on revenue-sharing lines rather than principle. That is where my suspicion is highest.

From the Bangladesh-Pakistan cricket corridor, this gap is even more visible. Local club contracts, board no-objection certificates, language and selection politics all create a complex layer here. Placing a foreign retired star's name into that reality makes verification harder still. Cross-border flattening is the most dangerous habit in cricket writing.

The franchise calendar intensifies this. Leagues, windows, travel all year round — a large cohort of retired stars now moves as 'freelance names.' In that crowd, if an organiser simply puts the name on a banner, detection is thin. The crowd sees ninety minutes; I keep the other ten thousand.

The publicity trap: does reporting make the tournament bigger?

Now the uncomfortable part I also weigh about my own trade. Dhawan explicitly asked fans not to spread or rely on unauthorised announcements. That is a conscious effort to lower hype, not raise it. But if media runs the story, the event's visibility rises too.

The biggest advertisement for an unauthorised event can be the protest against it — if the echo of that protest carries the event's name along with it. The journalist's job is hard here: report the player's allegation without repeatedly amplifying the event's glamour-name.

The fix is partial. The story should be governance-led — consent, contracts, accountability — not brand-led. The error comes when the headline makes the tournament's glossy name big and the player's allegation small.

The story's lifespan is set by this too. It will spread fast but will not last. One incident, one voice — that does not sustain a long narrative unless it becomes litigation or reveals a pattern across many names.

The contrarian read: it is not 'star versus rogue,' it is 'who sanctions'

The easy reading: an honest retired star, a dishonest tournament. That narrative is comfortable, and probably partly true. My experience says the easy reading is usually incomplete.

What the outside reading misses is that the question is not morality but authority. Who decides an event is 'legitimate'? Whoever grants sanction writes the definition of legitimacy. So 'unauthorised' is not an eternal truth; it is an administrative decision. An unsanctioned event may be unethical, but unethical and unsanctioned are not the same thing — and that distinction gets blurred.

The second missing piece is the burden of proof on consent. The allegation is one-sided. If the organiser produces a consent document, the whole narrative can flip. I never treat one-sided evidence as settled truth, even when my sympathy lies with the player.

The third missing piece is more uncomfortable. If borrowing a retired star's name is this easy, why is it easy? Because active players are bound by central contracts and NOCs, while retired players sit outside that net. The absence of protection is not the individual's failure; it is the system's. That is my central dissent.

The fourth is the possibility of fantasy- and betting-adjacent events. Star names are the core engagement currency of those products. I say this carefully — there is no evidence, and turning speculation into conclusion is wrong. But dismissing the possibility is also wrong, because the biggest tail risk lives there.

The risk ledger: not of play, but of trust

There is no on-field risk here. No result, no fixing, no injury, no ranking question. The risks are of a different kind.

The clearest is reputational. Association with an unverified event can dilute a star's brand — and he has already moved fast and publicly to distance himself, which is the right step. The second is commercial: sponsors and fans can be exposed to an endorsement that was never given.

The third, and the most caution-worthy, is integrity-related. If such events are betting- or fantasy-adjacent, name misuse can become a fraud vector. I flag this as a signal, not a conclusion. Without evidence, no claim here holds.

The fourth is institutional and long-term. If the 'star-borrowing' event model becomes normal, the line between sanctioned and unsanctioned blurs for fans. And when the line blurs, trust erodes — cricket's most expensive loss.

Looking forward, the dispute can go three ways. Worst case: the event keeps circulating the name, fans and sponsors are misled. Base case: Dhawan's team issues a legal notice, the organiser quietly removes the name, it settles without precedent. Best case: the episode produces a clear consent norm — verification mandatory before retired players' names are used by private events.

The forward signal: what to watch

Dhawan's incident may fade in weeks. The gap it exposed will not. Three things are worth watching.

One, the existence of a formal legal notice. 'Appropriate legal steps' signals that a professional apparatus is already engaged. Whether a notice lands tells us how far this goes.

Two, more names. If other retired stars appear as 'participants' in similar events, this is not a personal complaint but a class problem — and the remedy must move beyond a single case.

Three, the event's real identity — operating entity, host country, funding source. Not knowing those is itself a governance red flag. Until there are answers, caution is warranted.

Not a conclusion, a question

My beat never ends with a score, because a score is only the visible result. The real story sits earlier — in the consent form, the selection room, the banner-printing office. In Dhawan's case the scoreboard is irrelevant; what matters is a signature that may never have been given.

The question is therefore not about Dhawan. It is this: when the cricket economy has turned retired stars' memory into a product, who owns that product? Does a name built over twenty years in a national jersey belong to the player forever — or will someone one day 'borrow' that too, while we simply read the headline?