Mohsin Naqvi and the missing Asia Cups: Time for BCCI to end the farce

India won the Asia Cup on Sunday night. Again. And again, it walked away without the Asia Cup trophy.

The women's team had just crushed Sri Lanka by 72 runs in Dubai to become champions for a record eighth time. Yet when the moment came to collect the prize, there was no Indian team on the presentation stage, no trophy in Harmanpreet Kaur's hands and no photograph of India's champions lifting the silverware. A year after the men's team endured the same farce, the Asian Cricket Council had somehow managed to repeat it. In fact, the men's team is yet to receive the trophy, which is reportedly kept in the ACC headquarters in Dubai.

That is not India's embarrassment. It is the ACC's.

This is no longer a diplomatic spat that can be brushed aside as an unfortunate by-product of India-Pakistan tensions. It is now a recurring failure of the ACC's administration. The same thing happened to India's men's team in 2025. A year later, with everybody knowing exactly where the fault line lay, the governing body allowed it to happen again.

Once can be dismissed as an extraordinary diplomatic mess. Twice is an institutional failure. The Indian team posed for pictures without the Asia Cup trophy. Courtesy: BCCI Women X

That is why the Indian cricket board should now stop merely refusing the trophy and start questioning its participation in ACC events altogether.

The crucial detail from Sunday's episode is that this was not a spontaneous act of defiance by a bunch of Indian players who suddenly decided they did not want to share a stage with Naqvi. The Indian position had already been communicated. The BCCI had made it clear that India would not accept the trophy from Naqvi, but it also offered solutions.

One was for ACC deputy chair Khalid Al Zarooni to present the trophy. Another was for a representative of the winning board to hand it over, in keeping with recent practice, sources told India Today.

The trophy could have gone to the champions. The presentation could have happened. The ACC could have avoided another ugly spectacle. Instead, Naqvi remained the designated presenter and India remained unwilling to accept the trophy from him. The standoff ended exactly as it had a year earlier: the champions did not receive the championship trophy.SHOULD NAQVI REMAIN AT THE HELM? Mohsin Naqvi has been at the centre of controversy over the last two Asia Cup editions. Courtesy: AP

That is where Naqvi's responsibility as ACC president becomes impossible to ignore.

He is entitled to his position. He is entitled to attend an Asia Cup final. He is entitled to stand alongside other dignitaries at an ACC event. But the office he occupies carries a responsibility greater than any individual's desire to conduct a trophy presentation. The ACC president's first obligation at the end of a tournament is to make sure the champions receive what they have won.

If the ACC president knew that India's position had not changed, and if alternatives were placed before him, why was the solution not to make sure the trophy reached the winning team?

This was not an unforeseen problem. The warning had already arrived in enormous letters in September 2025.

The men's final descended into an extraordinary standoff after India made it clear that they would not receive the trophy from Naqvi. The presentation was delayed, the trophy disappeared from the dais and India celebrated without it. Suryakumar Yadav called it something he had never seen in his years of playing and following cricket: a champion team being denied a hard-earned trophy. India had also indicated that they were willing to receive it from an Emirates Cricket Board official, but that alternative did not materialise.

The ACC therefore had an entire year to make sure the farce did not happen again.

And this time it happened despite everybody knowing precisely what was coming. The possibility of another confrontation had been discussed before the women's final because Naqvi was expected to attend the closing ceremony. The question was not whether this problem might arise. The question was what the ACC would do if India won.

That is not good enough for the governing body of Asian cricket.BCCI'S STAND

Women's team head coach Amol Muzumdar's response after the final was telling.

“That stand has been taken by BCCI and we stand by it. For us, this tournament is over. We are the champions,” he told the press on Sunday in Dubai.

“That's good enough. It was on the big board that India champions of Asia Cup 2026. This tournament is officially over for us,” he added.

The players, quite rightly, can take that view. They won the tournament on the field. Nobody can take that achievement away from them.

But the ACC should not take comfort from it.

India being able to live without a trophy does not absolve the ACC of its duty to present one.

A trophy is not merely a piece of silverware. It is part of the ceremony, the archive and the memory of a sporting achievement. It is the photograph that gets framed, the image that lives in dressing rooms and yearbooks, the physical symbol handed from one champion to another. If an organiser cannot put that trophy into the hands of the team that won its competition, something has gone fundamentally wrong.

And Sunday night showed just how far wrong it went.

Naqvi endured the embarrassment of a section of the crowd shouting "trophy chor" as he left the field. That is not a moment to celebrate, regardless of which side of the India-Pakistan divide one occupies. It was an ugly ending to what should have been a celebration of women's cricket. Yet it was also entirely avoidable.

The ACC president did not have to put himself, his organisation or the tournament in that position. He could have found another presenter. He could have made the trophy bigger than himself.

Instead, the trophy presentation became the story.

That cannot become the new normal.BCCI NEEDS TO ACT TOUGH BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia was present in Dubai to watch the Women's Asia Cup final. Courtesy: Reuters

And this is where the BCCI needs to go beyond statements of protest. India should tell the ACC, plainly and formally, that if Naqvi remains at the helm and insists on being the person who presents the Asia Cup trophy to India, the Indian team should not participate in ACC competitions.

That is a serious step. It should not be taken lightly. But the ACC needs to understand the seriousness of what has happened twice.

India's participation is not simply another entry on the tournament sheet. India are the biggest commercial draw in Asian cricket. Their matches drive broadcast audiences, sponsorship interest, advertising value and digital engagement. India-Pakistan matches, in particular, are among the most commercially valuable fixtures in the sport. Remove India from the Asia Cup and the ACC does not merely lose one team. It loses a substantial part of the tournament's commercial proposition.

And it should be used responsibly, not recklessly.

The demand need not be complicated. India should not be asking the ACC to rewrite its constitution, remove Naqvi from office or turn every Asia Cup into a political referendum. It should ask for one basic sporting principle: the champions must receive their trophy.

If the ACC can guarantee that, India plays. If it cannot, India should stay away.

The argument is no longer about whether India likes Mohsin Naqvi. It is about whether the ACC is capable of separating the office of its president from the administration of its tournament. Naqvi may remain ACC president. But no president, secretary, chairman or dignitary should become more important than the team that has just won the competition.

The men's team did not receive its trophy in 2025. The women's team did not receive theirs in 2026. The second incident has made the first impossible to dismiss as a one-off.

The ICC should be watching this closely too. The governing body of world cricket cannot be expected to referee every India-Pakistan disagreement, nor should it. But when a major tournament ends twice with the champions unable to receive the trophy, it is time to ask whether the sport's governing bodies have proper protocols for such situations.

Enough is enough. Someone needs to end this farce.- EndsPublished By: sabyasachi chowdhuryPublished On: Sep 14, 2026 06:30 IST