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It's only in recent years that female athletes in the subcontinent have gained recognition as professional cricket players. Over many years, they faced scorn, censure, ostracism – including the threat of violence – to follow their love for the game. Now, India is hosting a global tournament with a prize fund of $13.8 million, where the host country's players could emerge as beloved icons if they secure their maiden championship win.

It would, then, be a travesty if the upcoming talk centered around their men's teams. However, when India confront Pakistan on Sunday, parallels are unavoidable. Not because the host team are strong favorites to triumph, but because they are not expected to shake hands with their opposition. The handshake controversy, if we must call it that, will have a fourth instalment.

If you missed the original drama, it occurred at the end of the male team's group stage game between India and Pakistan at the Asia Cup last month when the India captain, Suryakumar Yadav, and his squad hurried off the field to avoid the usual post-game post-match ritual. A couple of similar sequels transpired in the knockout round and the final, climaxing in a long-delayed award ceremony where the new champions declined to receive the cup from the Pakistan Cricket Board's chair, Mohsin Naqvi. It would have been comic if it weren't so distressing.

Those following the female cricket World Cup might well have hoped for, and even pictured, a alternative conduct on Sunday. Women's sport is supposed to provide a new blueprint for the sports world and an different path to toxic legacies. The image of Harmanpreet Kaur's team members offering the fingers of friendship to Fatima Sana and her team would have sent a strong message in an increasingly divided world.

Such an act could have recognized the mutually adverse environment they have conquered and offered a symbolic reminder that political issues are fleeting compared with the bond of female solidarity. Undoubtedly, it would have earned a place alongside the other good news story at this competition: the exiled Afghanistan cricketers invited as observers, being brought back into the game four years after the Taliban drove them from their country.

Instead, we've encountered the firm boundaries of the female athletic community. This comes as no surprise. India's men's players are huge stars in their homeland, worshipped like deities, regarded like royalty. They possess all the privilege and power that accompanies fame and wealth. If Yadav and his team are unable to defy the diktats of an strong-handed leader, what hope do the women have, whose elevated status is only newly won?

Maybe it's even more surprising that we're continuing to discuss about a handshake. The Asia Cup furore prompted much deconstruction of that particular sporting tradition, especially because it is considered the definitive symbol of sportsmanship. But Yadav's snub was much less important than what he said right after the initial match.

Skipper Yadav considered the winners' podium the "ideal moment" to devote his team's win to the armed forces who had taken part in India's strikes on Pakistan in May, known as Operation Sindoor. "My wish is they continue to motivate us all," Yadav told the post-match interviewer, "so we can provide them more reasons in the field whenever we have the chance to bring them joy."

This is where we are: a real-time discussion by a sporting leader openly celebrating a military assault in which dozens lost their lives. Two years ago, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja couldn't get a single humanitarian message approved by the ICC, not even the peace dove – a direct sign of peace – on his equipment. Yadav was eventually fined 30% of his game earnings for the comments. He wasn't the sole individual disciplined. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who mimicked aircraft crashing and made "six-zero" signals to the audience in the Super4 match – also referencing the hostilities – received the identical penalty.

This isn't a issue of failing to honor your opponents – this is athletics appropriated as patriotic messaging. It's pointless to be ethically angered by a missing handshake when that's simply a minor plot development in the narrative of two nations already employing cricket as a political lever and weapon of indirect conflict. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi clearly stated this with his post-final tweet ("Operation Sindoor on the games field. Outcome is the same – India wins!"). Naqvi, on his side, blares that athletics and governance must remain separate, while holding dual roles as a government minister and head of the PCB, and directly mentioning the Indian leader about his country's "embarrassing losses" on the war front.

The takeaway from this situation shouldn't be about cricket, or the Indian side, or the Pakistani team, in isolation. It serves as a caution that the concept of sports diplomacy is over, at least for now. The very game that was employed to foster connections between the countries 20 years ago is now being used to inflame tensions between them by individuals who know exactly what they're doing, and massive followings who are eager participants.

Division is infecting every realm of public life and as the most prominent of the global soft powers, athletics is constantly susceptible: it's a type of entertainment that directly encourages you to choose a team. Plenty who consider India's gesture towards Pakistan belligerent will still support a Ukrainian tennis player's right to refuse to greet a Russian opponent on the court.

Should anyone still believe that the athletic field is a magical safe space that unites countries, review the Ryder Cup recap. The conduct of the Bethpage spectators was the "ideal reflection" of a leader who enjoys the sport who publicly provokes animosity against his opponents. Not only did we witness the decline of the typical sporting values of fairness and shared courtesy, but the speed at which this might be accepted and tacitly approved when athletes – like US captain Keegan Bradley – fail to acknowledge and penalize it.

A post-game greeting is meant to signify that, at the end of any contest, however intense or bad-tempered, the competitors are putting off their simulated rivalry and acknowledging their shared human bond. Should the rivalry is genuine – if it requires its athletes come out in vocal support of their respective militaries – then what is the purpose with the sporting field at all? You might as well don the military uniform immediately.