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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. For generations, they endured scorn, censure, ostracism – even 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 home nation's athletes could become national treasures if they achieve their first tournament victory.

It would, therefore, be a travesty if the upcoming talk focused on their male counterparts. However, when India face Pakistan on Sunday, comparison are inevitable. Not because the home side are highly favoured to win, but because they are unlikely to shake hands with their opposition. The handshake controversy, as it's been dubbed, will have a fourth instalment.

If you missed the original drama, it took place 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 pitch to evade the usual post-game post-match ritual. Two same-y sequels transpired in the Super4 match and the final, climaxing in a long-delayed award ceremony where the title winners refused to accept the trophy from the Pakistan Cricket Board's chair, Mohsin Naqvi. It would have been comic if it weren't so tragic.

Those following the female cricket World Cup might well have anticipated, and even pictured, a different approach on Sunday. Female athletics is intended to offer a fresh model for the industry and an different path to toxic legacies. The sight 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 circumstances they have overcome and provided a symbolic reminder that politics are fleeting compared with the bond of female solidarity. It would certainly have earned a place alongside the additional positive narrative at this tournament: the exiled Afghanistan cricketers welcomed as observers, being reintegrated into the game four years after the Taliban forced them to flee their homes.

Instead, we've collided with the hard limits of the sporting sisterhood. No one is shocked. India's male cricketers are mega celebrities in their country, idolized like gods, treated like royalty. They enjoy all the benefits and power that accompanies fame and wealth. If Yadav and his team can't balk the diktats of an strong-handed prime minister, what hope do the female players have, whose elevated status is only newly won?

Maybe it's more astonishing that we're continuing to discuss about a simple greeting. The Asia Cup furore led to much analysis of that particular sporting tradition, not least because it is considered the definitive symbol of sportsmanship. But Yadav's refusal was far less significant than what he stated right after the first game.

Skipper Yadav deemed the victory stand the "ideal moment" to dedicate his team's victory to the armed forces who had taken part in India's strikes on Pakistan in May, referred to as Operation Sindoor. "My wish is they will motivate us all," Yadav told the post-game reporter, "and we give them further cause on the ground whenever we have the chance to make them smile."

This is where we are: a live interview by a team captain openly celebrating a military assault in which many people died. Two years ago, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja couldn't get a solitary humanitarian message past the ICC, including the peace dove – a direct emblem of peace – on his bat. Yadav was subsequently penalized 30% of his match fee for the comments. He wasn't the sole individual sanctioned. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who mimicked aircraft crashing and made "six-zero" signals to the audience in the later game – similarly alluding to the conflict – was given the identical penalty.

This is not a matter of failing to honor your rivals – this is sport co-opted as nationalistic propaganda. There's no use to be morally outraged by a absent handshake when that's merely a minor plot development in the narrative of two nations already employing cricket as a diplomatic tool and weapon of indirect conflict. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made that explicit with his post-final tweet ("Operation Sindoor on the games field. The result remains unchanged – India wins!"). Naqvi, on his side, proclaims that sport and politics shouldn't mix, while holding dual roles as a government minister and chair of the PCB, and directly mentioning the Indian leader about his country's "embarrassing losses" on the battlefield.

The lesson from this episode is not about cricket, or the Indian side, or Pakistan, in separation. It's a warning that the concept of ping pong diplomacy is finished, at least for now. The same sport that was used to foster connections between the nations 20 years ago is now being used to heighten hostilities between them by individuals who know exactly what they're doing, and huge fanbases who are eager participants.

Polarisation is affecting every aspect of society and as the greatest of the international cultural influences, athletics is constantly vulnerable: it's a type of entertainment that literally invites you to choose a team. Many who consider India's gesture towards Pakistan aggressive will nonetheless support a Ukrainian tennis player's right to decline meeting a Russian opponent across the net.

If you're still kidding yourself that the sporting arena is a protected environment that unites countries, review the Ryder Cup recap. The behavior of the New York spectators was the "ideal reflection" 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 equity and mutual respect, but how quickly this might be accepted and nodded through when athletes – such as US captain Keegan Bradley – fail to acknowledge and sanction it.

A handshake is meant to represent that, at the conclusion of any contest, no matter how 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 outspoken endorsement of their respective militaries – then what is the purpose with the sporting field at all? It would be equivalent to put on the military uniform now.