It's only in the past few seasons that women in the South Asian region have gained recognition as professional cricket players. Over many years, they faced scorn, censure, ostracism – even the risk of violence – to pursue their passion. Now, India is staging a global tournament with a total purse of $13.8 million, where the host country's athletes could become national treasures if they achieve their maiden championship win.
This would, then, be a great injustice if this weekend's talk centered around their men's teams. And yet, when India face Pakistan on Sunday, parallels are inevitable. Not because the home side are strong favorites to triumph, but because they are unlikely to exchange greetings with their rivals. Handshakegate, 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 hurried off the pitch to evade the customary post-game handshake tradition. Two similar follow-ups occurred in the knockout round and the final, culminating in a long-delayed award ceremony where the title winners refused to receive the cup from the Pakistan Cricket Board's head, Mohsin Naqvi. It would have been comic if it hadn't been so distressing.
Observers of the women's World Cup might well have anticipated, and even pictured, a alternative conduct on Sunday. Women's sport is intended to provide a fresh model for the industry and an different path to toxic traditions. The image of Harmanpreet Kaur's team members offering the fingers of friendship to Fatima Sana and her team would have made a powerful statement in an ever more polarized world.
Such an act could have recognized the mutually adverse circumstances they have conquered and provided a symbolic reminder that politics are temporary compared with the bond of female solidarity. It would certainly have deserved a spot alongside the other good news story at this competition: the displaced Afghanistan cricketers welcomed as observers, being reintegrated into the sport four years after the Taliban drove them from their homes.
Instead, we've collided with the hard limits of the female athletic community. No one is shocked. India's male cricketers are huge stars in their country, worshipped like gods, regarded like nobility. They enjoy all the benefits and power that comes with fame and money. If Yadav and his team are unable to defy the diktats of an authoritarian leader, what hope do the women have, whose elevated status is only newly won?
Perhaps it's more astonishing that we're still talking about a handshake. The Asia Cup uproar led to much analysis of that specific sporting tradition, especially because it is viewed as the definitive symbol of fair play. But Yadav's refusal was far less significant than what he stated immediately after the initial match.
Skipper Yadav considered the victory stand the "ideal moment" to devote his team's win to the armed forces who had participated in India's strikes on Pakistan in May, referred to as Operation Sindoor. "I hope they will inspire us all," Yadav told the post-match interviewer, "and we give them more reasons on the ground each time we get an opportunity to make them smile."
This reflects the current reality: a real-time discussion by a team captain openly celebrating a military assault in which dozens died. Previously, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja couldn't get a solitary humanitarian message past the ICC, including the dove logo – a direct emblem of harmony – on his bat. Yadav was eventually penalized 30% of his game earnings for the remarks. He wasn't the sole individual sanctioned. Pakistan's Haris Rauf, who mimicked aircraft crashing and made "6-0" signals to the crowd in the Super4 match – also referencing the hostilities – received the same punishment.
This is not a matter of not respecting your opponents – this is athletics appropriated as nationalistic propaganda. There's no use to be ethically angered by a absent greeting when that's merely a small detail in the narrative of two nations actively using cricket as a political lever and weapon of indirect conflict. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made that explicit with his post-final tweet ("Operation Sindoor on the games field. Outcome is the same – India wins!"). Naqvi, on his side, blares that athletics and governance shouldn't mix, while double-stacking roles as a state official and head of the PCB, and publicly tagging the Indian leader about his country's "embarrassing losses" on the battlefield.
The takeaway from this situation shouldn't be about cricket, or India, or the Pakistani team, in separation. It's a warning that the concept of sports diplomacy is over, for the time being. The same sport that was employed to build bridges between the nations 20 years ago is now being utilized to heighten hostilities between them by individuals who know exactly what they're doing, and huge fanbases who are active supporters.
Division is affecting every realm of public life and as the most prominent of the global soft powers, athletics is constantly susceptible: it's a form of leisure that directly invites you to pick a side. Many who find India's gesture towards Pakistan aggressive will nonetheless support a Ukrainian tennis player's right to refuse to greet a Russian competitor on the court.
If you're still kidding yourself that the sporting arena is a protected environment that brings nations together, go back and watch the golf tournament highlights. The conduct of the Bethpage spectators was the "perfect tribute" of a leader who enjoys the sport who openly incites hatred against his adversaries. Not only did we witness the decline of the typical sporting values of equity and shared courtesy, but the speed at which this might be normalized and nodded through when sportspeople themselves – like US captain Keegan Bradley – fail to acknowledge and sanction it.
A post-game greeting is supposed to signify that, at the conclusion of any contest, however intense or heated, the participants are setting aside their simulated rivalry and acknowledging their shared human bond. Should the rivalry 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 don the fatigues now.
