India Refuses to Accept Asian Women's Cricket Championship Trophy After Dubai Victory

India won the Women's T20 Asia Cup title after defeating Sri Lanka in the final match held at the Dubai International Stadium on Sunday. The Indian team secured the victory by a margin of 72 runs.

During the game, India scored an impressive 183 runs for five wickets. The success was largely attributed to the brilliant half-century performances of two opening batsmen: Smriti Mandhana, who scored 59 runs, and Shafali Verma, who scored 68 runs.

In response, Sri Lanka was bowled out for 111 runs on the last ball of their innings. In this match, spinners Sri Charani, who recorded a stat line of 4-1-20-4, and Dipti Sharma, whose statistics were 4-0-19-3, played a decisive role.

Despite the final score of the India versus Pakistan match in the Women's Asia Cup 2026, held on Saturday (September 5), being one-sided, the behavior of Pakistani captain Fatima Sana drew the most attention. Her manner of sending the player off after dismissing her raised many questions.

In the match played at the Dubai International Cricket Stadium, the Indian team scored a modest total of 56 runs. While chasing these runs, Shafali Verma showed determination by hitting a six on the very first ball. However, she managed to score only 12 runs and was forced to leave the field in the second over. Fatima Sana's ball hit her on the edge of the bat and immediately went into the bowler's hands.

After Fatima Sana dismissed Shafali Verma, declaring her out via caught and bowled, she accompanied her with a 'cold' farewell, which suddenly heated up the atmosphere on the field. Fatima pointed to the fielding team to signal to Shafali that it was time for her to return to the bench. Fortunately, the Indian batter did not respond to this gesture, otherwise, the situation could have escalated.

Subsequently, Fatima Sana sent Pratik Rawal to the pavilion with a personal score of 4 runs. She then dismissed Smriti Mandhana via LBW, dealing the third blow to India. By taking three wickets in the powerplay, Fatima achieved a significant feat: she became the fourth player in the squad to twice take three wickets in the powerplay in Women's T20 International.

Although the Pakistani captain dealt early blows to India by dismissing Shafali Verma and others, these attempts were not enough to secure a victory for Pakistan. After the three dismissals brought the score to 29 runs, the Indian captains Harmanpreet Kaur and Dipti Sharma took charge. Both batters played cautiously, preventing Pakistan from gaining further chances.

Dipti hit a four through mid-wicket off Nashra Sandhu's ball in the seventh over. Following this, Harmanpreet hit a six in the ninth over, securing India's victory by 7 runs. Prior to this, Indian spinners had restricted Pakistan's innings to just 55 runs. Shri Charni, Prema Rawat, Shafali Verma, and Dipti Sharma prevented the Pakistani batters from playing freely. Pakistan's score when three wickets fell was 27 runs, but a series of dismissals followed. Besides Shawal Julfikar (14 runs) and Munib Ali (13 runs), no Pakistani batter managed to reach ten runs.

The International Cricket Council (ICC) has decided to revoke Sri Lanka's rights to host the 2027 Women's World Cup. This tournament, scheduled to take place from February 14 to 28, will no longer be held in Sri Lanka.

The main reason for this decision was the government's interference in the operations of the Sri Lankan cricket board. There is a strict ICC regulation stipulating that the government must not exercise direct control or interfere with the work of any national cricket council.

In April of this year, the Sri Lankan government temporarily took control of the board by establishing a transformation commission to oversee cricket activities. Although the ICC repeatedly demanded elections to form an independent board, this did not happen, which prompted the ICC to take strong measures.

Prakash Shafter, Secretary of the transformation commission, confirmed that the tournament has been removed from Sri Lanka, but it has not yet been determined where it will be held.

A similar situation occurred previously: due to state interference, the Sri Lankan cricket board was suspended for several months in 2023–2024. During that period, the country suffered serious consequences, losing the right to host the 2024 U-19 Men's World Cup, which was handed over to South Africa.

The venue for the next tournament for the six teams has not yet been determined and will be decided at the next ICC council meeting. There is also a question regarding the possibility of the Sri Lankan women's team participating in this tournament. Since the teams with the highest rankings and the host nation were originally supposed to qualify, and the Sri Lankan team currently ranks sixth, the revocation of hosting rights jeopardizes its participation.