India wins an eighth Women's Asia Cup, then refuses the trophy from Naqvi

India's women beat Sri Lanka by 72 runs at Dubai International Stadium on Sunday and then declined to collect the Asia Cup from Mohsin Naqvi, president of the Asian Cricket Council. Naqvi is also chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board and Pakistan's interior minister. BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia said the refusal was solidarity with the men's team, which took the same position after winning the men's Asia Cup last year.

India made 183 for 5. Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma put on 129 for the first wicket. Sri Lanka were bowled out for 111. The crowd was 16,339, most of them India supporters. They did not see Harmanpreet Kaur lift the official trophy. The presentation was delayed by almost an hour. Naqvi handed the runners-up cheque to Sri Lanka. India held its own medal ceremony on the sidelines with Saikia and BCCI vice-president Rajeev Shukla.

The political file behind a cricket cup

India and Pakistan do not play bilateral cricket. They meet only in ICC and ACC events on neutral grounds. Players on both men's and women's sides have refused pre-match and post-match handshakes in this cycle. India beat Pakistan by seven wickets in the group stage of this tournament and again skipped the handshake.

Saikia told IANS that public pressure after the April 2025 attack in Pahalgam, and the military clash that followed, had changed the terms. The government, he said, still requires India to play every country in multinational events. That does not mean, he added, that the team will accept every condition. He called Naqvi one of the main leaders working against India's interests and said the women's side could not receive the trophy from him.

Coach Amol Muzumdar said the decision came from the board, not from a huddle of players on the outfield. That matters for who owns the next dispute. If the ACC writes a host-city protocol that puts its president on the podium, the BCCI now has a published rule of its own: not from this man.

An eighth title, and a World Cup next

The win is India's eighth Women's Asia Cup in ten editions, and it came against the 2024 champions. Saikia used that record to shift the conversation toward the 2026 ICC T20 World Cup, which he said is now the planning target. The on-field story is one-sided cricket. The off-field story is a governing body whose president holds a cabinet job in Islamabad.

Last year's men's final in the same city produced a longer farce. India had beaten Pakistan. Players waited more than an hour. The ceremony was cut short before the cup could change hands. Repeating the scene with a different India team, against Sri Lanka rather than Pakistan, shows the objection is to the presenter, not only to a bilateral opponent on the same night.

Naqvi sat with Shukla and Saikia during the match. He was still in the ground when India closed out the win. He then waited on the podium and left. ACC events will keep placing him there for as long as he holds the presidency. Indian teams will keep winning some of those events. The protocol problem is therefore scheduled, not accidental.

What the board has now made explicit

Two sentences in Saikia's briefing will travel. India will play multinational cricket against Pakistan because the government says it must. India will not take silverware from Pakistan's interior minister. Those two rules can coexist until an ICC tournament assigns the same man a ceremonial role. At that point the Board of Control will have to choose again, in public, with a larger audience than a Sunday night in Dubai.