DUBAI/LAHORE: The Indian team refused to receive the trophy at the conclusion of the Women’s Asia Cup 2026 final, with PCB sources linking the conduct to the injection of politics into cricket.
India defeated Sri Lanka in the final at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium on Sunday to take the title, but the presentation ceremony concluded without the winning side collecting the silverware from Asian Cricket Council President Mohsin Naqvi.
PCB sources said Mohsin Naqvi had not retreated an inch from his position last year and remains on the same position today.
Sources said India had a choice available on the night and once again gave preference to politics over cricket.
According to PCB sources, this is becoming a pattern of conduct — first the avoidance of handshakes and now the refusal to accept the trophy, the second such instance within the space of a year.
Sources associated with the event said the Asian Cricket Council acted in accordance with protocol, and that the disruption came from one side only.
The ACC has stated that the trophy remains available, as it always has been, and that there has been no change in its position.
The episode repeats the sequence that followed the men’s Asia Cup final of September 2025 at the same Dubai venue, when the Indian men’s team declined to accept the trophy from Naqvi after defeating Pakistan. On that occasion the presentation was delayed by more than an hour and concluded without the trophy being handed over.
The silverware from that final has remained at the Asian Cricket Council’s offices in Dubai since.
Under ACC event protocol, the president of the council presents the trophy at the conclusion of a council event. Naqvi, who is also chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board and Pakistan’s Interior Minister, was the designated presenter on Sunday as the office-holder.
That is the governance point PCB and ACC sources have emphasised. A presentation protocol is a rule of the tournament, applied uniformly and known to every participating board before the competition begins. A side that accepts the terms of an event and then declines a fixture of that event at the final ceremony is departing from an agreed framework, not responding to an improvised one.
Pakistan’s position has been consistent on that principle: the office, not the individual, is what protocol recognises, and the person occupying it does so by the election of the council’s own members.
The Asian Cricket Council administers the Asia Cup across formats and age groups and coordinates the regional calendar with its member boards. Repeated ceremonial disruption at its flagship events places an administrative burden on the council and raises questions it will have to resolve before its next event cycle.
For Pakistan, the immediate consequence is reputational rather than sporting: the country’s board has been placed at the centre of a dispute it did not initiate and in which it has, on the ACC’s own account, followed the written protocol.
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