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It's only in the past few seasons that female athletes in the South Asian region have been acknowledged as serious cricketers. Over many years, they faced ridicule, disapproval, ostracism – including the risk of physical harm – to pursue their passion. Now, India is staging a global tournament with a total purse of $13.8 million, where the host country's athletes could emerge as beloved icons if they achieve their first tournament victory.

It would, therefore, be a travesty if this weekend's talk focused on their male counterparts. And yet, when India confront Pakistan on Sunday, parallels are unavoidable. Not because the host team are highly favoured to win, but because they are unlikely to exchange greetings with their rivals. The handshake controversy, as it's been dubbed, will have a fourth instalment.

In case you weren't aware of the original drama, 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 skipper, Suryakumar Yadav, and his squad disappeared the field to evade the usual post-game post-match ritual. Two same-y follow-ups occurred in the Super4 match and the championship game, culminating in a long-delayed award ceremony where the title winners refused to accept the cup from the Pakistan Cricket Board's chair, Mohsin Naqvi. It would have been humorous if it weren't so tragic.

Those following the women's World Cup might well have anticipated, and even pictured, a alternative conduct on Sunday. Female athletics is intended to offer a new blueprint for the sports world and an different path to negative legacies. The image of Harmanpreet Kaur's team members offering the fingers of friendship to Fatima Sana and her squad would have made a strong message in an increasingly divided world.

Such an act could have recognized the mutually adverse circumstances they have overcome and offered a symbolic reminder that political issues are fleeting compared with the bond of women's unity. It would certainly have deserved a spot alongside the other positive narrative at this tournament: the exiled Afghanistan cricketers welcomed as guests, being brought back into the game four years after the Taliban drove them from their homes.

Rather, 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, treated like nobility. They possess all the privilege and power that comes with stardom and money. If Yadav and his side can't balk the directives of an authoritarian prime minister, what hope do the female players have, whose improved position is only newly won?

Perhaps it's even more surprising that we're continuing to discuss about a simple greeting. The Asia Cup uproar prompted much analysis of that specific sporting tradition, not least because it is considered the ultimate marker of sportsmanship. But Yadav's refusal was much less important than what he said immediately after the first game.

Skipper Yadav deemed the victory stand the "perfect occasion" to dedicate his team's victory to the armed forces who had taken part in India's attacks on Pakistan in May, known as Operation Sindoor. "I hope they will inspire us all," Yadav told the post-match interviewer, "so we can provide them more reasons in the field each time we have the chance to make them smile."

This reflects the current reality: a live interview by a team captain publicly praising a armed attack in which many people died. Previously, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja was unable to display a solitary peaceful symbol past the ICC, not even the peace dove – a direct emblem of harmony – on his equipment. Yadav was subsequently penalized 30% of his match fee for the comments. He was not the only one sanctioned. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who mimicked plane crashes and made "6-0" gestures to the audience in the Super4 match – similarly alluding to the hostilities – was given the identical penalty.

This is not a issue of not respecting your rivals – this is sport co-opted as patriotic messaging. There's no use to be ethically angered by a missing handshake when that's merely a minor plot development in the narrative of two countries already employing cricket as a diplomatic tool and instrument of proxy war. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi clearly stated this with his social media post after the final ("Operation Sindoor on the games field. Outcome is the same – India wins!"). Naqvi, for his part, blares that athletics and governance shouldn't mix, while holding dual positions as a government minister and head of the PCB, and publicly tagging the Indian leader about his country's "humiliating defeats" on the battlefield.

The takeaway from this situation is not about the sport, or the Indian side, or Pakistan, in separation. It serves as a caution that the concept of sports diplomacy is over, at least for now. The very game that was employed to build bridges between the nations 20 years ago is now being used to inflame tensions between them by people who are fully aware what they're doing, and huge fanbases who are eager participants.

Division is affecting every aspect of public life and as the most prominent of the global soft powers, athletics is constantly vulnerable: it's a type of leisure that literally invites you to pick a side. Many who find India's gesture towards Pakistan belligerent will nonetheless support a Ukrainian tennis player's right to decline meeting a Russian opponent across the net.

Should anyone still believe that the sporting arena is a magical safe space that unites countries, go back and watch the golf tournament recap. The conduct of the New York spectators was the "perfect tribute" of a leader who enjoys the sport who publicly provokes hatred against his opponents. Not only did we witness the decline of the usual sporting principles of equity and mutual respect, but the speed at which this might be accepted and nodded through when sportspeople themselves – like US captain Keegan Bradley – fail to acknowledge and penalize it.

A handshake is meant to signify that, at the conclusion of any contest, however bitter or bad-tempered, the competitors are putting off their pretend enmity and acknowledging their common humanity. If the enmity isn't pretend – if it requires its athletes emerge in outspoken endorsement of their national armed forces – then why are you bothering with the sporting field at all? It would be equivalent to don the military uniform now.