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It's only in recent years that women in the subcontinent have gained recognition as professional cricket players. For generations, they endured scorn, disapproval, exclusion – including the risk of physical harm – to pursue their love for the game. Currently, India is hosting a World Cup with a prize fund of $13.8 million, where the home nation's players could emerge as national treasures if they achieve their first tournament victory.

This would, then, be a great injustice if the upcoming discussion centered around their male counterparts. And yet, when India confront Pakistan on Sunday, comparison are inevitable. And not because the home side are highly favoured to win, but because they are unlikely to shake hands with their rivals. Handshakegate, if we must call it that, will have a another chapter.

If you missed the original drama, it occurred 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 avoid the customary post-game handshake tradition. Two same-y sequels occurred in the Super4 match and the championship game, culminating in a long-delayed award ceremony where the new champions declined to accept the trophy from the Pakistan Cricket Board's chair, Mohsin Naqvi. It would have been comic if it hadn't been so distressing.

Those following the female cricket World Cup might well have hoped for, and even imagined, a alternative conduct on Sunday. Female athletics is supposed to provide a new blueprint for the sports world and an different path to negative legacies. The image of Harmanpreet Kaur's players extending the hand of camaraderie to Fatima Sana and her squad would have sent a strong message in an increasingly divided world.

It might have recognized the mutually adverse environment they have overcome and provided a meaningful gesture that political issues are temporary 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 observers, being brought back into the sport four years after the Taliban drove them from their homes.

Rather, we've collided with the hard limits of the female athletic community. No one is shocked. India's men's players are huge stars in their country, idolized like gods, treated like royalty. They possess all the privilege and influence that accompanies stardom and money. If Yadav and his side can't balk the directives of an authoritarian leader, what chance do the women have, whose elevated status is only newly won?

Maybe it's more astonishing that we're continuing to discuss about a handshake. The Asia Cup uproar led to much deconstruction of that specific sporting ritual, not least because it is considered the definitive symbol of fair play. But Yadav's snub was far less significant than what he stated right after the initial match.

Skipper Yadav deemed the winners' podium the "ideal moment" to dedicate his team's win to the military personnel who had taken part in India's strikes on Pakistan in May, known as Operation Sindoor. "My wish is they continue to motivate us all," Yadav told the post-game reporter, "so we can provide them further cause in the field whenever 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 dozens died. Two years ago, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja was unable to display a solitary peaceful symbol past the ICC, including the peace dove – a literal emblem of peace – on his equipment. Yadav was eventually fined 30% of his match fee for the remarks. He was not the only one sanctioned. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who mimicked aircraft crashing and made "six-zero" gestures to the crowd in the Super4 match – also referencing the conflict – was given the identical penalty.

This isn't a matter of failing to honor your opponents – this is sport co-opted as nationalistic propaganda. There's no use to be morally outraged by a absent handshake when that's simply a minor plot development in the story of two nations actively using cricket as a political lever 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 cricket pitch. Outcome is the same – India wins!"). Naqvi, on his side, proclaims that sport and politics must remain separate, while holding dual roles as a government minister and head 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 the sport, or the Indian side, or Pakistan, in separation. It serves as a caution that the notion of sports diplomacy is finished, for the time being. The very game that was employed to foster connections between the countries 20 years ago is now being used to inflame tensions between them by people who are fully aware what they're attempting, and huge fanbases who are active supporters.

Division is infecting every aspect of public life and as the most prominent of the global soft powers, sport is constantly susceptible: it's a type of entertainment that directly invites you to choose a team. Plenty who consider India's actions towards Pakistan belligerent will still champion a Ukrainian tennis player's right to decline meeting a Russian opponent on the court.

If you're still kidding yourself that the sporting arena is a protected environment that brings nations together, review the Ryder Cup highlights. The conduct of the Bethpage spectators was the "perfect tribute" of a golf-loving president who publicly provokes hatred against his opponents. We observed not just the decline of the usual sporting values of fairness and shared courtesy, but how quickly this might be accepted and nodded through when athletes – like US captain Keegan Bradley – refuse to recognise and sanction it.

A post-game greeting is supposed to represent that, at the end of every competition, however intense or heated, the participants are setting aside their pretend enmity and acknowledging their common humanity. Should the rivalry is genuine – demanding that its players come out in outspoken endorsement of their respective militaries – then why are you bothering with the arena of sports at all? It would be equivalent to put on the fatigues now.