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It's only in recent years that female athletes in the South Asian region have gained recognition as professional cricket players. Over many years, they endured scorn, censure, exclusion – including the risk of violence – to pursue their passion. Now, India is hosting a World Cup with a prize fund of $13.8 million, where the home nation's athletes could emerge as national treasures if they secure their maiden championship win.

This would, then, be a travesty if this weekend's talk focused on their men's teams. And yet, when India confront Pakistan on Sunday, parallels are inevitable. And not because the host team are highly favoured to triumph, but because they are unlikely to exchange greetings with their rivals. The handshake controversy, as it's been dubbed, will have a another chapter.

If you missed the initial incident, it occurred at the conclusion of the men's group match between India and Pakistan at the continental championship last month when the India skipper, Suryakumar Yadav, and his team hurried off the pitch to evade the usual friendly handshake tradition. A couple of similar sequels transpired in the knockout round and the final, climaxing in a protracted award ceremony where the title winners refused to receive the trophy from the Pakistan Cricket Board's chair, Mohsin Naqvi. The situation might have seemed humorous if it weren't so tragic.

Observers of the female cricket World Cup might well have hoped for, and even imagined, a different approach on Sunday. Women's sport is intended to provide a new blueprint for the industry and an different path to toxic legacies. The image 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 acknowledged the mutually adverse circumstances they have overcome and offered a meaningful gesture that political issues are fleeting compared with the bond of female solidarity. Undoubtedly, it would have deserved a spot alongside the other good news story at this competition: the exiled Afghanistan players invited as observers, being brought back into the sport four years after the Taliban drove them from their homes.

Rather, we've encountered the firm boundaries of the female athletic community. No one is shocked. India's male cricketers are huge stars in their homeland, worshipped like deities, regarded like royalty. They enjoy all the privilege and power that comes with fame and wealth. If Yadav and his team are unable to defy the directives of an strong-handed prime minister, what hope do the women have, whose improved position is only recently attained?

Perhaps it's even more surprising that we're still talking about a handshake. The Asia Cup furore prompted much analysis of that particular sporting ritual, especially because it is considered the definitive symbol of fair play. But Yadav's refusal was much less important than what he stated immediately after the first game.

The India captain considered the victory stand the "ideal moment" to devote his team's win to the military personnel who had taken part in India's strikes on Pakistan in May, known as Operation Sindoor. "I hope they continue to inspire us all," Yadav told the post-match interviewer, "so we can provide them more reasons in the field whenever we get an opportunity to make them smile."

This reflects the current reality: a live interview by a sporting leader openly celebrating a military assault in which many people lost their lives. Previously, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja couldn't get a single humanitarian message past the ICC, not even the peace dove – a literal emblem of harmony – on his equipment. Yadav was subsequently penalized 30% of his game earnings for the comments. He was not the sole individual sanctioned. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who mimicked aircraft crashing and made "six-zero" signals to the audience in the Super4 match – similarly alluding to the conflict – received the identical penalty.

This isn't a matter of failing to honor your opponents – this is athletics co-opted as patriotic messaging. There's no use to be morally outraged 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 made that explicit with his social media post after the final ("Operation Sindoor on the games field. Outcome is the same – India wins!"). Naqvi, for his part, proclaims that athletics and governance must remain separate, while holding dual positions as a government minister and chair of the PCB, and publicly tagging the Indian prime minister about his country's "humiliating defeats" on the battlefield.

The takeaway from this situation is not about cricket, or the Indian side, or Pakistan, in isolation. It's a warning that the concept of sports diplomacy is finished, at least for now. The same sport that was employed to foster connections between the countries 20 years ago is now being utilized to inflame tensions between them by individuals who are fully aware what they're attempting, and huge fanbases who are active supporters.

Polarisation is affecting every aspect of public life and as the greatest of the global soft powers, sport is constantly susceptible: it's a type of leisure that directly invites you to choose a team. Many who find India's gesture towards Pakistan aggressive will still champion a Ukrainian tennis player's right to decline meeting a Russian competitor across the net.

Should anyone still believe that the athletic field is a magical safe space that brings nations together, go back and watch the Ryder Cup highlights. The conduct of the Bethpage crowds was the "perfect tribute" of a golf-loving president who publicly provokes animosity against his opponents. Not only did we witness the erosion of the typical sporting values of fairness and mutual respect, but the speed at which this might be accepted and tacitly approved when athletes – such as US captain Keegan Bradley – refuse to recognise and penalize it.

A handshake is meant to signify that, at the conclusion of any contest, however bitter or heated, the participants are putting off their pretend enmity and recognizing their common humanity. If the enmity isn't pretend – if it requires its players emerge in outspoken endorsement of their national armed forces – then what is the purpose with the sporting field at all? It would be equivalent to don the fatigues now.