Does India need the Asia Cup trophy to prove to future generations that it won the tournament in Dubai? Really, is this some notarised affidavit to be produced before a sceptical grandson in 2075? ‘Look beta, here is the original Cup, hence your grandfather is telling the truth’. Absolute nonsense.
Victories are written on the scoreboard and etched in memory, not chiselled into ornamental silverware. India’s win is tattooed on the collective psyche of a billion Indians and countless cricket lovers across the world. It is as permanent as the trophies Kapil, Dhoni or Kohli won for India.
Trophy chors and their conscience
As for the Cup itself, let it remain where it apparently feels most comfortable – safely hidden among the trophy chors. They can shine it, smuggle it, or hide it in a basement trunk for all we care. Their conscience, if they still possess one beneath the layers of protocol and petty politics, will do the real polishing. Every time they glance at that stolen silverware, it will jab like a pebble in a shoe. India does not need to flaunt it; Pakistan’s administrators need to conceal it.
The photo op that fooled no one
Here lies the real masterstroke. Skipper Surya Kumar Yadav stood with arms raised skyward, palms poised as though holding an invisible trophy. No Cup in sight – only imagination and intent. And then the magic began. Memers pasted in trophies of every shape and size. News agencies obligingly carried the doctored versions. Social media erupted. The photograph of victory went global – Cup or no Cup.
If Pakistan’s organisers thought that withholding the trophy would erase the win, they forgot they live in the age of memes, where imagination outpaces reality and ridicule weighs more than metal.
Lessons from ancient Greece
And if you think a Cup is indispensable to victory, remember the ancient Olympic Games. Champions received not gold or silver but a laurel wreath – just olive branches twisted into a crown. Over time, the leaves dried, cracked, crumbled, and sometimes ended up as goat fodder. Yet the glory of victory remained immortal. No one dared claim an athlete did not win because his crown decomposed.
The Cup as Mohsin’s insecurity blanket
This brings us back to Mohsin Naqvi, the man who moonlights as both Pakistan’s Interior Minister and the Asian Cricket Council’s chief. A portfolio that lets him juggle tear gas and trophies with equal flair.
For him, the Cup is less a sporting prize and more an insecurity blanket, a shiny prop to distract his domestic audience from uncomfortable truths. The thinking seems to be: If we cannot win it, at least let us keep it.
But props are not proof. No matter how long Naqvi clutches the Cup, he looks less like an administrator and more like a stagehand caught sneaking away with the hero’s crown after the play has ended.
For India, the victory is self-evident; for Naqvi, the Cup is just a placebo for a restless crowd that long ago stopped believing his tricks.
And honestly, why bother playing at all? Pakistan does not need eleven field players. Just deploy one person to ‘lift’ the trophy and run. Why endure the humility of defeat when you can simply steal the Cup?
The final over
So let the Cup remain wherever it has been stashed – hidden in some ministerial cupboard between a rubber stamp and an arrest warrant. The win is India’s, the headlines are India’s, and the embarrassment is entirely his.
The more he clings to the trophy, the more absurd he looks, like a child refusing to return the bat after being bowled out, insisting the game is still on.
Cup or no Cup, India lifted it, if only in mime. Mohsin Naqvi, meanwhile, has earned the only crown he deserves: chief trophy chor.
