🔗 Share this article

It is merely in the past few seasons that women in the subcontinent have been acknowledged as serious cricketers. For generations, they endured ridicule, censure, ostracism – even the risk of physical harm – to pursue their passion. Currently, India is staging a World Cup with a prize fund of $13.8 million, where the home nation's players could become national treasures if they secure their first championship win.

It would, therefore, be a travesty if the upcoming talk centered around their men's teams. And yet, when India confront Pakistan on Sunday, parallels are inevitable. And not because the home side are highly favoured to win, but because they are not expected to exchange greetings with their opposition. Handshakegate, if we must call it that, will have a fourth instalment.

If you missed the original drama, it occurred at the end of the men's group match between India and Pakistan at the Asia Cup last month when the India captain, Suryakumar Yadav, and his team hurried off the pitch to evade the customary friendly handshake tradition. Two same-y sequels occurred in the knockout round and the championship game, culminating in a long-delayed presentation ceremony where the title winners refused to receive the cup from the Pakistan Cricket Board's head, Mohsin Naqvi. The situation might have seemed humorous if it hadn't been so distressing.

Observers of the women's World Cup might well have anticipated, and even imagined, a different approach on Sunday. Female athletics is supposed to offer a new blueprint for the sports world and an different path to negative traditions. The image of Harmanpreet Kaur's team members extending the fingers of friendship to Fatima Sana and her squad would have sent a powerful statement in an increasingly divided world.

Such an act could have recognized the mutually adverse environment they have conquered and provided a meaningful gesture that political issues are temporary compared with the connection of women's unity. Undoubtedly, it would have deserved a spot alongside the other positive narrative at this tournament: the displaced Afghanistan players welcomed as observers, being brought back into the game four years after the Taliban forced them to flee their homes.

Instead, we've encountered the hard limits of the sporting sisterhood. This comes as no surprise. India's male cricketers are mega celebrities in their homeland, idolized like gods, regarded like royalty. They enjoy all the benefits and influence that comes with stardom and wealth. If Yadav and his team can't balk the directives of an strong-handed leader, what hope do the female players have, whose improved position is only newly won?

Maybe it's even more surprising that we're still talking about a simple greeting. The Asia Cup furore led to much deconstruction of that particular sporting tradition, especially because it is considered the definitive symbol of sportsmanship. But Yadav's snub was much less important than what he stated immediately after the initial match.

The India captain considered the winners' podium the "ideal moment" to devote his team's win to the military personnel who had taken part in India's strikes on Pakistan in May, referred to as Operation Sindoor. "I hope they will motivate us all," Yadav told the post-game reporter, "so we can provide them more reasons in the field whenever we have the chance to bring them joy."

This is where we are: a real-time discussion by a team captain publicly praising a armed attack in which many people died. Previously, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja was unable to display a single humanitarian message past the ICC, not even the peace dove – a literal sign of peace – on his equipment. Yadav was subsequently penalized 30% of his match fee for the comments. He was not the sole individual sanctioned. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who imitated aircraft crashing and made "six-zero" signals to the audience in the later game – also referencing the hostilities – was given the same punishment.

This is not a issue of failing to honor your opponents – this is athletics appropriated as nationalistic propaganda. There's no use to be morally outraged by a missing greeting when that's merely a minor plot development in the narrative of two countries already employing cricket as a political lever and weapon of proxy war. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made that explicit with his social media post after the final ("Operation Sindoor on the cricket pitch. The result remains unchanged – India wins!"). Naqvi, for his part, proclaims that athletics and governance shouldn't mix, while holding dual roles as a state official and head of the PCB, and publicly tagging the Indian leader about his country's "humiliating defeats" on the battlefield.

The takeaway from this situation is not about cricket, or India, or the Pakistani team, in separation. It's a warning that the notion of ping pong diplomacy is finished, at least for now. The very game that was used to build bridges between the nations 20 years ago is now being used to heighten hostilities between them by individuals who are fully aware what they're attempting, and huge fanbases who are active supporters.

Division is affecting every aspect of public life and as the most prominent of the international cultural influences, sport is constantly susceptible: it's a type of leisure that directly invites you to pick a side. Many who find India's actions towards Pakistan belligerent will nonetheless support a Ukrainian tennis player's right to decline meeting a Russian competitor on the court.

Should anyone still believe that the athletic field is a protected environment that unites countries, review the golf tournament highlights. The conduct of the Bethpage crowds was the "perfect tribute" of a leader who enjoys the sport who publicly provokes hatred against his opponents. Not only did we witness the decline of the typical sporting principles of equity and shared courtesy, but the speed at which this might be accepted and tacitly approved when athletes – like US captain Keegan Bradley – fail to acknowledge and sanction it.

A handshake is meant to signify that, at the end of any contest, however bitter or bad-tempered, the participants are setting aside their simulated rivalry and recognizing their shared human bond. If the enmity is genuine – if it requires its athletes come out in outspoken endorsement of their respective militaries – then why are you bothering with the sporting field at all? You might as well put on the military uniform now.