🔗 Share this article

It is merely in the past few seasons that women in the South Asian region have gained recognition as professional cricket players. Over many years, they faced ridicule, censure, ostracism – even the risk of violence – to follow their passion. Now, India is staging a World Cup with a prize fund of $13.8 million, where the host country's athletes could become national treasures if they achieve their maiden championship win.

It would, therefore, be a great injustice if the upcoming talk centered around their men's teams. And yet, when India confront Pakistan on Sunday, comparison are inevitable. Not because the host team are highly favoured to win, but because they are not expected to shake hands with their rivals. The handshake controversy, if we must call it that, will have a another chapter.

In case you weren't aware of the initial incident, it occurred 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 squad hurried off the pitch to avoid the customary post-game handshake tradition. A couple of similar follow-ups occurred in the knockout round and the final, climaxing in a protracted award ceremony where the title winners declined to receive the cup from the Pakistan Cricket Board's chair, Mohsin Naqvi. It would have been comic if it weren't so tragic.

Those following the female cricket World Cup might well have hoped for, and even pictured, a alternative conduct on Sunday. Female athletics is supposed to offer a new blueprint for the industry and an alternative to toxic legacies. The sight of Harmanpreet Kaur's team members extending the hand of camaraderie to Fatima Sana and her team would have sent a strong message in an increasingly divided world.

It might have acknowledged the shared challenging circumstances they have conquered and provided a meaningful gesture that politics are temporary compared with the bond of female solidarity. It would certainly have earned a spot alongside the other good news story at this competition: the exiled Afghanistan players invited as guests, being reintegrated into the sport four years after the Taliban forced them to flee their homes.

Instead, we've encountered the hard limits of the female athletic community. This comes as no surprise. India's men's players are mega celebrities in their homeland, worshipped like gods, regarded like royalty. They possess all the privilege and influence that accompanies fame and wealth. If Yadav and his team are unable to defy the diktats of an authoritarian prime minister, what hope do the women have, whose improved position is only recently attained?

Maybe it's even more surprising that we're continuing to discuss about a simple greeting. The Asia Cup furore prompted much analysis of that particular sporting tradition, not least because it is viewed as the definitive symbol of fair play. But Yadav's snub was much less important than what he said immediately after the initial match.

The India captain deemed the winners' podium the "perfect occasion" to dedicate his team's win to the armed forces who had participated in India's attacks on Pakistan in May, known as Operation Sindoor. "I hope they continue to motivate us all," Yadav told the post-match interviewer, "and we give them more reasons on the ground whenever we get an opportunity to make them smile."

This is where we are: a real-time discussion by a sporting leader openly celebrating a armed attack in which dozens died. Two years ago, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja was unable to display a single peaceful symbol past the ICC, including the peace dove – a direct emblem of peace – on his equipment. Yadav was subsequently fined 30% of his match fee for the comments. He wasn't the only one sanctioned. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who mimicked aircraft crashing and made "six-zero" signals to the crowd in the Super4 match – also referencing the hostilities – received the same punishment.

This is not a issue of not respecting your rivals – this is athletics co-opted as nationalistic propaganda. There's no use to be ethically angered by a missing greeting when that's merely a minor plot development in the narrative of two nations already employing cricket as a political lever and instrument of proxy war. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made that explicit with his post-final tweet ("Operation Sindoor on the cricket pitch. The result remains unchanged – India wins!"). Naqvi, on his side, proclaims that athletics and governance shouldn't mix, while holding dual positions as a government minister and head of the PCB, and publicly tagging the Indian prime minister about his country's "humiliating defeats" on the war front.

The lesson from this episode is not about cricket, or India, or the Pakistani team, in isolation. It's a warning that the notion of ping pong diplomacy is over, at least for now. The same sport that was employed to foster connections between the nations 20 years ago is now being utilized to inflame tensions between them by individuals who are fully aware what they're attempting, and massive followings who are active supporters.

Division is infecting every realm of public life and as the most prominent of the international cultural influences, sport is always vulnerable: it's a type of entertainment that directly encourages you to choose a team. Plenty who consider India's gesture towards Pakistan belligerent will nonetheless support a Ukrainian tennis player's entitlement to decline meeting a Russian opponent across the net.

If you're still kidding yourself that the sporting arena is a protected environment that unites countries, go back and watch the Ryder Cup highlights. The conduct of the New York crowds was the "ideal reflection" of a golf-loving president who openly incites hatred against his opponents. Not only did we witness the decline of the typical sporting principles of fairness and shared courtesy, but how quickly this might be accepted and nodded through when athletes – such as US captain Keegan Bradley – refuse to recognise and sanction it.

A post-game greeting is meant to signify that, at the conclusion of any contest, 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 – demanding that its athletes come out in outspoken endorsement of their national armed forces – then why are you bothering with the sporting field at all? It would be equivalent to don the military uniform now.