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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 endured scorn, censure, exclusion – including the threat of physical harm – to pursue their passion. Currently, India is hosting a global tournament with a prize fund of $13.8 million, where the host country's players could become national treasures if they secure their first championship win.

It would, then, be a travesty if the upcoming talk centered around their men's teams. However, when India face Pakistan on Sunday, parallels are inevitable. Not because the home side are strong favorites to triumph, but because they are not expected to exchange greetings with their rivals. Handshakegate, 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 end of the male team's group stage game between India and Pakistan at the continental championship last month when the India skipper, Suryakumar Yadav, and his team hurried off the pitch to avoid the customary friendly post-match ritual. Two similar sequels occurred in the knockout round and the championship game, climaxing in a protracted award ceremony where the title winners refused to receive the trophy from the Pakistan Cricket Board's head, Mohsin Naqvi. It would have been humorous if it hadn't been so tragic.

Those following the female cricket World Cup might well have hoped for, and even imagined, a alternative conduct on Sunday. Women's sport is intended to offer a new blueprint for the sports world and an different path to negative traditions. The sight of Harmanpreet Kaur's players offering the fingers of friendship to Fatima Sana and her squad would have sent a strong message in an ever more polarized world.

Such an act could have acknowledged the mutually adverse circumstances they have conquered and offered a symbolic reminder that political issues are temporary compared with the connection of female solidarity. Undoubtedly, it would have earned a place alongside the additional good news story at this tournament: the displaced Afghanistan players invited as observers, being reintegrated into the game four years after the Taliban forced them to flee their country.

Rather, we've collided with the firm boundaries of the sporting sisterhood. This comes as no surprise. India's male cricketers are huge stars in their homeland, worshipped like deities, treated like nobility. They possess all the privilege and influence that comes with stardom and money. If Yadav and his team are unable to defy the directives of an strong-handed prime minister, what hope do the female players have, whose improved position is only recently attained?

Maybe it's even more surprising that we're still talking about a simple greeting. The Asia Cup uproar prompted much analysis of that particular sporting ritual, not least because it is viewed as the definitive symbol of sportsmanship. But Yadav's snub was much less important than what he stated right after the first game.

Skipper Yadav deemed the victory stand the "perfect occasion" to dedicate his team's victory to the military personnel who had taken part in India's attacks on Pakistan in May, known as Operation Sindoor. "My wish is they will inspire us all," Yadav told the post-game reporter, "and we give them more reasons on the ground 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 military assault in which many people died. Two years ago, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja couldn't get a solitary humanitarian message approved by 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 remarks. He was not the only one disciplined. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who mimicked aircraft crashing and made "6-0" gestures to the crowd in the Super4 match – similarly alluding to the hostilities – received the same punishment.

This isn't a matter of failing to honor your rivals – this is athletics appropriated as patriotic messaging. There's no use to be morally outraged by a missing handshake when that's simply a minor plot development in the story of two nations already employing cricket as a political lever and instrument of proxy war. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi clearly stated this with his post-final tweet ("Operation Sindoor on the games field. Outcome is the same – India wins!"). Naqvi, for his part, proclaims that athletics and governance shouldn't mix, while double-stacking positions as a state official and head of the PCB, and publicly tagging the Indian leader 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's a warning that the notion of ping pong diplomacy is over, for the time being. The same sport that was used to foster connections between the countries 20 years ago is now being utilized to inflame tensions between them by people who are fully aware what they're attempting, and massive followings who are active supporters.

Polarisation is infecting every aspect of public life and as the greatest of the global soft powers, sport is constantly susceptible: it's a form of entertainment that literally invites you to pick a side. Plenty who find India's gesture towards Pakistan belligerent will nonetheless champion a Ukrainian tennis player's right to decline meeting a Russian opponent on the court.

Should anyone still believe that the sporting arena is a magical safe space that unites countries, review the golf tournament recap. The behavior of the New York crowds was the "perfect tribute" of a leader who enjoys the sport who publicly provokes animosity against his opponents. Not only did we witness the decline of the usual sporting principles of equity and mutual respect, but how quickly this might be accepted and tacitly approved when athletes – such as US captain Keegan Bradley – refuse to recognise and sanction it.

A post-game greeting is supposed to represent that, at the conclusion of every competition, no matter how bitter or heated, the competitors are setting aside their pretend enmity and recognizing their shared human bond. If the enmity is genuine – if it requires its athletes come out in outspoken endorsement of their national armed forces – then why are you bothering with the arena of sports at all? You might as well put on the fatigues immediately.