India's women win an eighth Asia Cup and refuse the trophy from Mohsin Naqvi

India's women beat Sri Lanka by 72 runs in Dubai on 13 September and then stayed off the presentation stage. The trophy sat on the podium. Asian Cricket Council president Mohsin Naqvi, who is also Pakistan's interior minister and chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, handed the runners-up cheque to Sri Lanka captain Chamari Athapaththu and left. India's players were not on the field.

Head coach Amol Muzumdar made the chain of command clear after the match. The Board of Control for Cricket in India took the stand, he said, and the team stood by it. "For us, this tournament is over. We are the champions. That's good enough. It was on the big board that India champions of Asia Cup 2026." He added that the squad is now looking toward the Asian Games.

BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia later gave the political reason. He said the board had already told the ACC that India would not take the cup from Naqvi if he conducted the ceremony. Two work-arounds were offered: ACC deputy chair Khalid Al Zarooni could present the trophy, or a representative of the winning board could do it. Saikia said Naqvi rejected both. "One of the main leaders who is working against the interests of our country; we can't receive the trophy from him," he told IANS, as quoted by Sportstar.

The women's side was acting in line with the men's team. India won the men's Asia Cup in Dubai in September 2025 and refused the same handover. That trophy has not reached Indian soil. Saikia said the board is still asking for it. He framed Sunday's absence as solidarity with that unfinished file, and with public pressure after the April 2025 attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 people. The government policy, he said, is that India still plays every country in multinational events. That policy does not, in the board's reading, require a photograph with Pakistan's interior minister.

The match itself was one-sided. Harmanpreet Kaur's side completed a record eighth Women's Asia Cup title. The presentation then waited about 40 minutes. Match officials received mementos. Sri Lanka collected runners-up medals. BCCI secretary Saikia himself presented an in-house best-fielder medal to Nandini Sharma. After that, the Indian group stayed near the dressing room in a huddle. Unlike last year's men's final, Naqvi did not walk out carrying the cup. He left after the Sri Lanka cheque.

India and Pakistan do not play bilateral cricket. They meet only at ICC and ACC events on neutral grounds. A short military clash in 2025 nearly widened. Naqvi sits in both a sporting office and a security ministry. That double role is the point of the dispute. Reuters asked the ACC for comment. No reply had been issued when the first reports went out on 14 September.

Muzumdar refused to treat the missing metal as a sporting problem. He said the unit is united, including support staff. The scoreboard in Dubai already named India as champion. The next competitive target he named is the Asian Games. Saikia pointed further out, to planning for the 2026 ICC T20 World Cup.

What remains open is custody of two trophies, one from 2025 and one from 2026, and whether ACC events can keep a Pakistani cabinet minister as the man who hands them over. The women's team has now copied the men's refusal. The ACC has not published a new protocol. For the players, the tournament is closed. For the two boards, the argument over who may stand on the stage is not.

The sporting record is not in dispute. India won every match it needed in the United Arab Emirates and beat Sri Lanka by 72 runs in the final. Harmanpreet Kaur's team now holds eight Asia Cup titles. That mark sits on the ACC's own board in Dubai. What the board does not yet have is a written rule that separates the ceremonial role of the ACC president from the political office that president holds in Islamabad.

Naqvi's three titles matter because they sit on one person: ACC president, PCB chairman, interior minister. The BCCI's objection is to the third title, not to the existence of an Asian body. Saikia's offer of Al Zarooni or a winning-board official was an attempt to keep the ceremony inside the ACC while removing the minister from the handshake. Rejection of those options left the Indian team with the instruction it followed: stay in the dressing-room circle.

For readers who watched last year's men's final, Sunday was a copy with one change. The men's trophy left with Naqvi and has not been delivered. The women's trophy, on the first accounts from Dubai, did not leave in the same way. Custody of the metal is now a second file, beside the file about who may hand it over. Muzumdar's sentence that the tournament is over is true for the players. It is not true for the two boards.