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It is merely in recent years that women in the subcontinent have gained recognition as serious cricketers. For generations, they endured scorn, disapproval, exclusion – even the risk of violence – to follow their love for the game. Now, India is hosting a World Cup with a total purse of $13.8 million, where the host country's athletes could emerge as national treasures if they secure their maiden championship win.

It would, therefore, be a travesty if the upcoming talk centered around their men's teams. However, when India confront Pakistan on Sunday, comparison are inevitable. And not because the home side are strong favorites to win, but because they are not expected to shake hands with their rivals. The handshake controversy, if we must call it that, will have a another chapter.

In case you weren't aware of the initial incident, it took place at the conclusion of the men's group match between India and Pakistan at the continental championship last month when the India captain, Suryakumar Yadav, and his team hurried off the pitch to evade the usual friendly handshake tradition. Two similar follow-ups occurred in the knockout round and the championship game, culminating in a long-delayed award ceremony where the title winners declined to accept the trophy 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 anticipated, and even pictured, a different approach on Sunday. Women's sport is intended to provide a new blueprint for the sports world and an alternative to toxic legacies. The sight of Harmanpreet Kaur's team members offering the hand of camaraderie to Fatima Sana and her team would have sent a powerful statement in an increasingly divided world.

It might have recognized the mutually adverse circumstances they have overcome and offered a meaningful gesture that politics are fleeting compared with the bond of female solidarity. Undoubtedly, it would have deserved a place alongside the additional positive narrative at this tournament: the exiled Afghanistan players invited as guests, being brought back into the sport four years after the Taliban drove them from their country.

Instead, we've collided with the hard limits of the sporting sisterhood. This comes as no surprise. India's male cricketers are mega celebrities in their homeland, idolized like deities, treated like nobility. They possess all the benefits and influence that accompanies fame and money. If Yadav and his side are unable to defy the diktats of an authoritarian leader, what chance do the female players have, whose elevated status is only recently attained?

Perhaps it's even more surprising that we're continuing to discuss about a simple greeting. The Asia Cup furore led to much analysis of that particular sporting ritual, especially because it is considered the definitive symbol of fair play. But Yadav's snub was far less significant than what he stated immediately after the initial match.

The India captain deemed the winners' podium the "perfect occasion" to devote his team's victory to the armed forces who had participated in India's strikes on Pakistan in May, known as Operation Sindoor. "I hope they continue to motivate us all," Yadav informed the post-match interviewer, "and we give them more reasons in the field each time we get an opportunity to make them smile."

This reflects the current reality: a live interview by a team captain publicly praising a military assault in which many people lost their lives. Two years ago, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja couldn't get a single humanitarian message approved by the ICC, not even the dove logo – a literal sign of peace – on his bat. Yadav was eventually fined 30% of his game earnings for the remarks. He was not the sole individual disciplined. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who imitated aircraft crashing and made "6-0" signals to the crowd in the Super4 match – also referencing the conflict – was given the same punishment.

This isn't a matter of not respecting your rivals – this is athletics co-opted as nationalistic propaganda. There's no use to be ethically angered by a missing handshake when that's merely a small detail in the narrative of two nations actively using cricket as a political lever and weapon of proxy war. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi clearly stated this with his post-final tweet ("Operation Sindoor on the cricket pitch. The result remains unchanged – India wins!"). Naqvi, for his part, proclaims that sport and politics shouldn't mix, while holding dual positions as a state official and head of the PCB, and directly mentioning the Indian prime minister about his country's "humiliating defeats" on the war front.

The lesson from this episode shouldn't be about the sport, or India, or the Pakistani team, in isolation. It's a warning that the notion of sports diplomacy is finished, at least for now. The very game that was employed to build bridges between the nations 20 years ago is now being utilized to inflame tensions between them by people who know exactly what they're doing, and massive followings who are eager participants.

Division is infecting every realm of society and as the greatest of the global soft powers, sport is always susceptible: it's a form of leisure that literally encourages you to pick a side. Many who find India's gesture towards Pakistan aggressive will still champion a Ukrainian tennis player's entitlement to decline meeting a Russian opponent across the net.

If you're still kidding yourself that the sporting arena is a protected environment that brings nations together, go back and watch the golf tournament recap. The behavior of the Bethpage crowds was the "perfect tribute" of a leader who enjoys the sport who publicly provokes animosity against his adversaries. Not only did we witness the erosion of the typical sporting principles of fairness and mutual respect, but how quickly this might be accepted and nodded through when sportspeople themselves – like US captain Keegan Bradley – refuse to recognise and penalize it.

A handshake is supposed to represent that, at the conclusion of any contest, no matter how bitter or heated, the competitors are setting aside their pretend enmity and recognizing their common humanity. Should the rivalry isn't pretend – if it requires its athletes come out in outspoken endorsement of their national armed forces – then what is the purpose with the sporting field at all? It would be equivalent to put on the fatigues immediately.