By Staff Reporter
DUBAI: India’s women cricketers refused to collect the Asia Cup trophy from the head of Asian cricket’s governing body on Sunday night, plunging the presentation ceremony in Dubai into confusion and repeating a snub delivered by their male counterparts a year earlier.
Harmanpreet Kaur’s side had just demolished Sri Lanka by 72 runs to win a record eighth Women’s Asia Cup title, but the players stayed in their dressing room rather than walk out to receive the trophy from Mohsin Naqvi, the chairman of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) who doubles as chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board and, more pointedly, as Pakistan’s interior minister.
The result was a presentation ceremony thrown into disarray at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium. More than 40 minutes passed between Sri Lanka’s last wicket falling and the ceremony beginning. By half past ten local time, with no sign of proceedings starting, broadcasters diverted and interviewed Harmanpreet immediately — a slot normally reserved for after the trophy has changed hands.
When the ceremony finally got under way, it followed a curious sequence. Match officials collected their mementoes first, then Sri Lanka’s players and coaching staff, with captain Chamari Athapaththu taking the runners-up cheque from Naqvi’s hands and giving a brief interview to the broadcaster. The cameras then cut away. India’s players never appeared on the podium, and the winners’ medals and trophy went uncollected.
No formal explanation was offered by either the Indian team or its board. But the episode was widely read, in India and beyond, as a deliberate act of protest against Naqvi’s presence, consistent with New Delhi’s continued refusal to normalise cricketing contact with Pakistani officialdom since relations between the two countries deteriorated sharply after the terrorist attack in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir, in April last year.
The scenes were a near-exact replay of what unfolded at the same venue almost 12 months ago, when India’s men’s team beat Pakistan in last year’s Asia Cup final and likewise declined to take the trophy from Naqvi. On that occasion, the stand-off dragged the ceremony out for closer to 90 minutes. The Board of Control for Cricket in India said at the time that its players would not accept the trophy from “one of the main political leaders of Pakistan,” while stressing that the decision was not intended to hand Naqvi a pretext to withhold the silverware from the team altogether.
That trophy, however, has still not made its way back to India. It remains locked in the ACC’s Dubai offices nearly a year on, after Naqvi reportedly rejected a joint approach from BCCI secretary Jay Shah and other regional boards and instead insisted that an Indian representative travel to Dubai to collect it in person — terms the BCCI has refused. The dispute looks set to be raised again when the International Cricket Council’s members next convene, in November.
Sunday’s events suggest the Women’s Asia Cup trophy may be headed for a similarly protracted limbo. Sources close to the tournament indicated the trophy remained available for India to collect, insisting that “our position has not changed” and that Naqvi had not shifted “an inch” from the stance he took last year. Those close to the situation described the Indian team’s refusal as running contrary to the spirit of the game, with cricket “once again” being “overshadowed by politics.”
The politics were, if anything, secondary to the cricket on the night. Sent in to bat, India piled up 183 for 5 in their 20 overs, built on an opening stand between Smriti Mandhana and Shafali Verma that put the result beyond real doubt long before the finish. Verma made 68 and reached her half-century off just 24 balls, while Mandhana contributed 59 as the pair put on a century partnership for the first wicket.
Sri Lanka’s reply never got going. Chasing 184 to win, the holders were bowled out for just 111, undone by India’s spin attack. Shree Charani took four wickets to lead the collapse, with Deepti Sharma claiming three more as only Athapaththu, Vishmi Gunaratne and Nilakshi de Silva reached double figures. Athapaththu, who top-scored with 36 off 32 balls, was left to reflect on a below-par team performance with the Asian Games still to come.
“This is part of the game — one team wins, one team loses,” the Sri Lanka captain said afterwards. “We did not play our best game in all three departments today. They played very well, but we will bounce back. The Asian Games is coming up.”
Harmanpreet, for her part, credited her openers with setting the tone for the innings. “We know they are a great team, but we played to our standards,” she said. “We set high standards for ourselves and we wanted to keep matching them. The way Shafali and Smriti batted was great to see — and great to see someone like Shafali take responsibility through the tournament with both bat and ball.”
For all the celebration of a record-extending eighth continental crown, the abiding image from Dubai was not of India lifting the trophy but of an empty space where the winners should have stood — a reminder that, for now at least, cricket between the two nations continues to be conducted as much through absence and protocol as through runs and wickets.
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