🔗 Share this article

It's only in the past few seasons that women in the subcontinent have gained recognition as serious cricketers. Over many years, they endured scorn, disapproval, ostracism – including the risk of violence – to pursue their love for the game. Currently, India is staging a World Cup with a total purse of $13.8 million, where the home nation's athletes could become beloved icons if they achieve their first tournament victory.

This would, then, be a great injustice if this weekend's discussion centered around their men's teams. And yet, when India confront Pakistan on Sunday, parallels are unavoidable. And not because the host team are highly favoured to win, but because they are not expected to shake hands with their opposition. The handshake controversy, if we must call it that, will have a another chapter.

If you missed the initial incident, 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 squad disappeared the field to evade the usual post-game handshake tradition. A couple of same-y follow-ups occurred in the Super4 match and the championship game, climaxing in a protracted award ceremony where the new champions declined to accept the cup from the Pakistan Cricket Board's head, Mohsin Naqvi. The situation might have seemed comic if it hadn't been so distressing.

Observers of the female cricket World Cup might well have anticipated, and even pictured, a alternative conduct on Sunday. Female athletics is intended to offer a fresh model for the industry and an different path to toxic traditions. The sight of Harmanpreet Kaur's team members extending the hand of camaraderie to Fatima Sana and her team would have made a strong message in an increasingly divided world.

It might have acknowledged the mutually adverse circumstances they have overcome and provided a meaningful gesture that political issues are fleeting compared with the bond of women's unity. Undoubtedly, it would have deserved a spot alongside the additional good news story at this tournament: the displaced Afghanistan players invited as guests, being brought back into the game four years after the Taliban forced them to flee their country.

Instead, we've collided with the hard limits of the sporting sisterhood. This comes as no surprise. India's male cricketers are mega celebrities in their homeland, worshipped like gods, regarded like royalty. They possess all the privilege and influence that accompanies fame and money. If Yadav and his team are unable to defy the diktats of an authoritarian 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 ritual, not least because it is considered the ultimate marker of fair play. But Yadav's snub was much less important than what he stated immediately after the first game.

The India captain deemed the winners' podium the "perfect occasion" to dedicate his team's victory to the military personnel who had participated in India's strikes on Pakistan in May, known as Operation Sindoor. "I hope they continue to inspire us all," Yadav informed the post-match interviewer, "so we can provide them further cause in the field each time we get an opportunity to bring them joy."

This is where we are: a real-time discussion by a team captain openly celebrating a armed attack in which many people lost their lives. Two years ago, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja couldn't get a solitary humanitarian message past the ICC, including the peace dove – a literal sign of peace – on his equipment. Yadav was subsequently fined 30% of his game earnings for the remarks. He wasn't the only one sanctioned. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who mimicked aircraft crashing and made "6-0" signals to the audience in the Super4 match – also referencing the conflict – was given the identical penalty.

This is not a matter of failing to honor your opponents – this is sport co-opted as patriotic messaging. There's no use to be morally outraged by a absent greeting 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 social media post after the final ("Operation Sindoor on the games field. The result remains unchanged – India wins!"). Naqvi, on his side, proclaims that athletics and governance shouldn't mix, while holding dual positions as a state official and chair of the PCB, and directly mentioning the Indian prime minister about his country's "embarrassing losses" on the war front.

The takeaway from this episode shouldn't be about cricket, or India, or the Pakistani team, in isolation. It serves as a caution that the concept of sports diplomacy is over, for the time being. The very game that was employed to foster connections between the nations 20 years ago is now being utilized to heighten hostilities between them by people who know exactly what they're doing, and massive followings who are eager participants.

Division is infecting every aspect of public life and as the most prominent of the international cultural influences, athletics is always susceptible: it's a form of leisure that literally encourages you to pick a side. Plenty who consider India's gesture towards Pakistan aggressive will nonetheless support a Ukrainian tennis player's right to decline meeting a Russian competitor across the net.

If you're still kidding yourself that the athletic field is a protected environment that unites countries, go back and watch the golf tournament highlights. The conduct of the New York crowds was the "perfect tribute" of a leader who enjoys the sport who publicly provokes animosity against his opponents. We observed not just the erosion of the typical sporting principles of fairness and mutual respect, but how quickly this might be accepted and tacitly approved when sportspeople themselves – like US captain Keegan Bradley – refuse to recognise and penalize it.

A post-game greeting is supposed to represent that, at the end of any contest, however bitter or heated, the competitors are setting aside their simulated rivalry and acknowledging their common humanity. Should the rivalry is genuine – demanding that its players emerge in vocal support of their national armed forces – then why are you bothering with the sporting field at all? It would be equivalent to put on the military uniform now.