KARACHI: The Asia Cup may have ended, but the controversy kicked up by the Indian cricket team refuses to die down.

Players, pundits and politicians from both sides continued to trade barbs on Monday, following team India’s refusal to accept the winning trophy from Asian Cricket Council president Mohsin Naqvi — who also serves as Pakistan’s interior minister and head of the cricket board.

Pakistan captain Sal­m­an Agha said India had “disrespected cricket”, whe­­­r­­eas his counterpart Surya­ku­mar Yadav complained his side were denied the trophy after winning the Asia Cup, which has been overshadowed by ill-will on both sides.

The two teams did not shake hands for the third straight match, a thriller that India won by five wickets in Dubai on Sunday.

With ties between the two neighbours at their lowest ebb, India and Pakistan now only meet on neutral territory in international tournaments.

Emotions have been running high between the sides, following a military conflagration between the nuclear-armed neighbours in May, when New Delhi attacked Pakistan after accusing it of being a deadly attack in India-held Kashmir, without any evidence .

On Sunday, the start of the presentation ceremony was delayed by more than an hour and then cut short just before the winner’s trophy was to be handed out with ACC chief Naqvi among those left waiting on the dais.

Subsequently, the Indian players celebrated retaining their regional crown by mimicking holding an imaginary trophy.

Devajit Saikia, secretary of the Indian cricket board confirmed their players had refused to accept the trophy from Mr Naqvi, and threatened to lodge a complaint with cricket’s governing body.

“There is an ICC conference in November in Dubai. In the next conference, we are going to launch a very serious and very strong protest against the act of the ACC chairperson,” he said in a statement, accusing Mr Naqvi of taking the trophy away.

In Suryakumar’s words, the Indian side felt as if they were “denied a trophy”, even though in the same breath, he stated that: “We took the call on the ground about not taking the trophy.

But Salman Agha said India’s actions during the tournament had been “bad for cricket”.

“I think what has happened in this tournament is very disappointing,” he told reporters. “If they think they disrespected us by not shaking hands, then I say they disrespected cricket.

Political barbs

Hobbled by punishing US tariffs and dumbfounded by Islamabad’s successes on the diplomatic circuit, Indian PM Narendra Modi turned India’s cricket victory over Pakistan in Dubai into a xenophobic event for potentially small stakes: Bihar elections.

His tweet, “Operation Sindoor on the games field. Outcome is the same - India wins! Congrats to our cricketers”, was criticised by some, but they were few and far between.

In response, Mohsin Naqvi continued the battlefield imagery: “If war was your measure of pride, history already records your humiliating defeats at Pakistan’s hands. No cricket match can rewrite the truth. Dragging war into sports only exposes your desperation and disgraces the very spirit of the game,” he wrote on X.

The Indian National Congress, for once, also spoke up against mixing military symbols with sport, with its spokesman Pawan Khera telling the prime minister: “It is not right to compare a cricket match to a battlefield”.

Other Indian leaders praised the cricket win but comments reflected India’s characteristic regionalist pride as well.

A tweet by Indian Home Minister Amir Shah, whose son is now the ICC boss, clearly explained the current thrust of Indian cricket.

“A phenomenal victory. The fierce energy of our boys blew up the rivals again. Bharat is destined to win no matter which field,” he wrote on X.

Old-school cricketer Kapil Dev was not pleased with the mixing of cricket with a battlefield symbol, either.

“Shaking hands is not a big thing, it doesn’t matter… you already announced you don’t want to take the trophy from that man, that’s also fine, but you can’t linger on with these things. You have to finish you have to move on,” he told India Today during an interview.

“We should look into the sports side rather than looking into the politics side. Yes, the media has the responsibility to bring everything to the table, but as a sportsman, I would like to see that we should stick to sports,” he said, adding that sportsmen should stick to the game, and let politicians and the cricket board decide what they needed to do.

Former Pakistan keeper Rashid Latif also made no bones about this contempt for the Indian cricket team’s conduct, saying that the move warranted punitive action.

“In any other sport, this would have been an open and shut case,” he said, but noted that this was not likely.

“Ugly day for cricket as India once again breached the spirit and essence of the gentleman’s game, that too in broad daylight,” Latif concluded.

Our correspondent in New Delhi also contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, September 30th, 2025