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It is merely in the past few seasons that women in the subcontinent have gained recognition as professional cricket players. Over many years, they faced scorn, censure, ostracism – including the threat of physical harm – 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 beloved icons if they achieve their maiden championship win.

It would, therefore, be a great injustice if this weekend's talk centered around their male counterparts. However, when India face Pakistan on Sunday, parallels are unavoidable. Not because the home side are highly favoured to win, but because they are not expected to shake hands with their opposition. Handshakegate, as it's been dubbed, will have a fourth instalment.

In case you weren't aware of the initial incident, it occurred at the conclusion of the male team's group stage game between India and Pakistan at the Asia Cup last month when the India skipper, Suryakumar Yadav, and his squad hurried off the field to avoid the customary post-game post-match ritual. A couple of similar follow-ups transpired in the Super4 match and the final, culminating in a protracted award ceremony where the title winners declined to accept the trophy from the Pakistan Cricket Board's head, Mohsin Naqvi. It would have been humorous if it hadn't been so tragic.

Observers of the female cricket World Cup might well have anticipated, and even pictured, a different approach on Sunday. Female athletics is intended to offer a new blueprint for the sports world and an different path to negative traditions. The image of Harmanpreet Kaur's players offering the fingers of friendship to Fatima Sana and her squad would have made a powerful statement in an increasingly divided world.

It might have recognized the mutually adverse circumstances they have conquered and provided a symbolic reminder that politics are fleeting compared with the bond of female solidarity. Undoubtedly, it would have deserved a spot alongside the other good news story at this tournament: the exiled Afghanistan cricketers welcomed as guests, being reintegrated into the sport four years after the Taliban forced them to flee their homes.

Rather, we've collided with the firm boundaries of the sporting sisterhood. No one is shocked. India's male cricketers are mega celebrities in their country, worshipped like deities, regarded like royalty. They enjoy all the benefits and power that comes with fame and wealth. If Yadav and his side can't balk the directives of an strong-handed leader, what chance do the female players have, whose elevated status is only newly won?

Perhaps it's more astonishing that we're continuing to discuss about a handshake. The Asia Cup uproar led to much analysis of that particular sporting ritual, not least because it is considered the ultimate marker of sportsmanship. But Yadav's refusal was far less significant than what he said immediately after the first game.

The India captain considered the winners' podium the "ideal moment" to devote his team's win to the military personnel who had participated in India's attacks on Pakistan in May, known as Operation Sindoor. "I hope they will inspire us all," Yadav informed the post-game reporter, "and we give them further cause in the field whenever we have the chance to make them smile."

This is where we are: a real-time discussion by a sporting leader openly celebrating a armed attack in which many people lost their lives. Previously, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja was unable to display a solitary peaceful symbol past the ICC, not even the peace dove – a direct sign of peace – on his bat. Yadav was eventually fined 30% of his match fee for the comments. He wasn't the only one disciplined. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who imitated aircraft crashing and made "6-0" gestures to the crowd in the later game – also referencing the hostilities – was given the identical penalty.

This isn't a issue of not respecting your rivals – this is athletics co-opted as nationalistic propaganda. It's pointless to be ethically angered by a absent greeting when that's merely a minor plot development in the narrative of two nations actively using cricket as a diplomatic tool and instrument 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, blares that sport and politics must remain separate, while holding dual roles as a government minister and chair 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 cricket, or the Indian side, or Pakistan, 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 build bridges between the countries 20 years ago is now being used to inflame tensions between them by individuals who are fully aware what they're doing, and massive followings who are eager participants.

Division is infecting every aspect of society and as the most prominent of the international cultural influences, athletics is constantly susceptible: it's a type of leisure that directly encourages you to pick a side. Plenty who find India's actions towards Pakistan belligerent will still champion a Ukrainian tennis player's right to refuse to greet a Russian opponent on the court.

If you're still kidding yourself that the athletic field is a magical safe space that unites countries, go back and watch the Ryder Cup recap. The behavior of the New York crowds was the "ideal reflection" of a golf-loving president who publicly provokes animosity against his opponents. Not only did we witness the erosion of the usual sporting values of equity and mutual respect, but the speed at which this might be accepted and tacitly approved when athletes – like US captain Keegan Bradley – refuse to recognise and penalize it.

A post-game greeting is meant to represent that, at the end of any contest, no matter how bitter or heated, the competitors are putting off their pretend enmity and recognizing their shared human bond. Should the rivalry is genuine – demanding that its athletes emerge in vocal support of their national armed forces – then what is the purpose with the arena of sports at all? You might as well put on the fatigues immediately.