Dignity comes first — Mohsin Naqvi’s Dubai trip was a mistake but India’s trophy refusal is equally unprofessional

By Imran Malik | Sports & National Affairs Desk | MediaBites.com.pk

Indian women’s team refused the Women’s Asia Cup 2026 trophy from Mohsin Naqvi for the second consecutive time but both sides must answer for turning cricket into a political battlefield.

It has now happened twice. And both times the lesson is the same. Some positions carry a dignity that must be protected, even when the authority to act exists. But dignity is a two-way street. And India’s cricket board owes the world of cricket an explanation too.

India’s women’s cricket team refused to accept the Women’s Asia Cup trophy from ACC President Mohsin Naqvi after defeating Sri Lanka by 72 runs in the final at Dubai International Cricket Stadium on September 13, echoing the men’s team’s identical refusal at the same venue during the 2025 Asia Cup final.

The presentation was delayed by nearly 50 minutes after India secured their victory. While Naqvi was present on the dais, the Indian team stayed inside the dressing room. The ceremony eventually ended without India receiving the trophy or winners’ medals.

This Is Not New — It Is a Pattern

India has maintained distance from Pakistani players and their officials ever since political relations between the two countries were strained in the aftermath of the terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Jammu and Kashmir, in April 2025.

The ceremony was delayed by over an hour because the Indian players reportedly refused to accept the trophy from Naqvi, who insisted on presenting it himself. The Indian team was prepared to receive the trophy from Emirates Cricket Board vice-chairman Khalid Al Zarooni, but officials eventually removed the trophy, leaving the champions to celebrate without the silverware.

The men’s Asia Cup trophy saga shows no signs of resolution, with the silverware still locked away at the Asian Cricket Council headquarters in Dubai. Naqvi reportedly refused to release the trophy to India despite a formal request from BCCI.

Now the women’s trophy faces the same fate.

India’s Unprofessional Gesture — BCCI Must Answer

This is where MediaBites must be completely honest, regardless of which side of the border the criticism lands on.

India’s women’s cricket team won the Women’s Asia Cup 2026. They defeated Sri Lanka by 72 runs. That is a genuine sporting achievement that deserved to be celebrated with full professional dignity, on a podium, with their trophy held high, representing everything that women’s cricket in South Asia has achieved over decades of patient growth.

Instead Harmanpreet Kaur and her teammates stayed inside a dressing room while the ceremony happened without them. They refused to collect medals they had earned. They reduced one of women’s cricket’s most significant achievements to a political statement.

This is not leadership. This is not professionalism. And it is not what sport is for.

The Board of Control for Cricket in India and the Indian government must hear this clearly. India-Pakistan political tensions are real. Nobody is dismissing the gravity of what happened or the legitimate grievances on both sides.

But sport has always been the one space where nations step away from their worst impulses and compete on the basis of skill, preparation, and character. The Olympic ideal, imperfect as it is, exists precisely because humanity understands that athletes represent something larger than the politics of the moment.

When BCCI allows, encourages, or simply fails to prevent its teams from using trophy ceremonies as political stages, it does not make India look strong. It makes BCCI look small. It reduces India’s women cricketers, who earned their eighth Asia Cup title through genuine excellence, to instruments of a geopolitical dispute they did not create and cannot resolve.

BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia told ANI, “We have decided not to take the Asia Cup trophy from the ACC chairman, who happens to be one of the main political leaders of Pakistan.”

That statement from a cricket board secretary is extraordinary in its openness about mixing politics with sport. BCCI is not a government ministry. Its job is to administer cricket in India. The decision to refuse a trophy at a sporting ceremony based on the presenter’s political affiliation belongs in a foreign ministry, not a cricket board.

India’s cricket team is one of the most talented, best resourced, and most celebrated sporting institutions on earth. It deserves leadership that protects the sanctity of its achievements rather than instrumentalizing them for political messaging.

Keep the dirty politics away from the sport. Both countries. No exceptions.

The Question Nobody in Pakistan Is Asking Loudly

Mohsin Naqvi is Pakistan’s Federal Minister of Interior and Narcotics Control, Chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, and President of the Asian Cricket Council. He held the same positions in 2025, when India refused to award him the trophy at the same venue.

He knew what would happen. He went anyway.

An experienced statesman instinctively values dignity over authority. Standing at a podium waiting for a team that has publicly decided not to come is not an exercise of authority. It is a public diminishment of the position itself.

The episode echoed the 2025 men’s Asia Cup final, also played in Dubai, when India refused to accept the trophy from Naqvi. The presentation was delayed by more than an hour amid a disagreement over who would hand India the trophy.

Pakistan’s Interior Minister should not need to travel to Dubai to watch India play Sri Lanka, then stand waiting on a podium while the winning team refuses to emerge from their dressing room, then have that image broadcast globally.

Dignity Before Everything

Both sides have failed the sport this week. One by insisting on exercising authority in a situation that guaranteed humiliation. The other by reducing a genuine sporting triumph to a political protest.

The trophies are sitting in an ACC office in Dubai. Both of them. That image, two trophies uncollected because two institutions could not separate sport from politics, is not a statement of strength from either side.

It is a failure of leadership. On both sides of the border.

— Imran Malik | Sports and National Affairs Desk | MediaBites.com.pk | SharjahNews.ae
Sources: Outlook India, Gulf News, Yardbarker, ESPNcricinfo, Al Jazeera, ANI