Asia Cup champions India on Sunday did not collect the award after the triumph. A report by news agency PTI said the Indian cricket team refused to accept the winners’ trophy from Asian Cricket Council chairman (ACC) Mohsin Naqvi, who also happens to be Pakistan’s Interior Minister and the chairman of the country’s cricket board. As Naqvi stood on one side for the presentation ceremony to begin, Indian players were standing within 15 yards, refusing to budge from their positions, causing the formalities to be inordinately delayed.
It was learnt that the Indian team management inquired about who was supposed to present the winners’ trophy, and the ACC officials went into a huddle upon realizing that their boss wasn’t an acceptable figure for the champions.
When Naqvi eventually took the presentation stage, Indian fans in the stands began booing collectively, chanting “Bharat Mata Ki Jai.”
Once Naqvi took the dais, he was informed that the Indian team would not accept the trophy if he attempted to present it, and that an official protest would be lodged. As Naqvi waited, someone from the organizers suddenly took the trophy into the Indian dressing room.
Having neither shaken hands with Pakistani players throughout the three Asia Cup games nor participated in the customary pre-toss photoshoots, the Indian team had already signaled to the ACC that it would not accept the trophy from the ACC chairman.
In another dramatic development, the Pakistani players did not emerge from the dressing room even an hour after the match had ended, leaving only their chairman stranded and embarrassed, wanting to perform the honours as per the continental body’s protocol.
After nearly 55 minutes, Salman Agha and his teammates finally emerged and were greeted with loud chants of “Indiaaaa, Indiaaaa.”
It had become a foregone conclusion that India would not accept the trophy from Naqvi, who had previously posted cryptic videos referencing Cristiano Ronaldo’s “plane crash” celebration – widely interpreted as a reference to Pakistani claims that six Indian jets were downed during ‘Operation Sindoor’.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)