India, Sept. 28 -- For the first time in an Asia Cup, India will play Pakistan in the final tonight. Going by the past two matches, it is unlikely that the Indian captain will neither shake hands after the toss with his Pakistani counterpart nor will the two teams engage in handshakes after the game. The first time it happened, criticism, at least from neutral quarters, was directed against the Indian team's churlishness and the twinning of politics and cricket. This was understandable but somewhat off the mark. The Indian team's on-field action and captain Suyakumar Yadav's subsequent justification were a reflection of BCCI's and by extension the Indian government's stand on Pakistan following the recent border conflict and the Pahalgam terror attack. The cricketers merely did what they were asked to do once India decided to play the match. The same applies to the Pakistani players who were asked to engage in brinkmanship during their game against UAE to ostensibly protest against the match referee of the India-Pakistan match. The lack of agency of Indian cricketers is a symptom of the subservience of sportspersons to the State and the various sports federations that are also more often than not controlled by politicians. In a co-authored paper with Dibyendu Mishra and Joyojeet Pal, comparing Indian and American sportspersons, we argued that what Indian sportspersons can and cannot say about the government has a direct impact on their professional careers unlike in the US. We conducted a study of the social media behaviour of Indian sportspersons and found that their most frequent engagements were best wishes to politicians on their birthdays. Most of the tweets or posts were formal, using such terms as "sir" and "honourable", suggesting subservience to political actors. We also found that Indian sportspersons were far more likely than their American counterparts to engage in and amplify government sponsored content and social media campaigns. In contrast, Indian sportspersons rarely engaged in controversial issues or those that might run counter to the views of the government of the day. On the notion that politics and sports shouldn't mix, let's once and for all bury this myth. Sport, like any other human activity, is not only political but is inextricably linked to nationalism. George Orwell might have exaggerated a bit when he famously described sport, in the context of Cold War politics, as "war minus the shooting". However, historian EJ Hobsbawm got it right when he noted that sport was "uniquely effective as a medium for inculcating national feelings", and that the "imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of eleven named people". India-Pakistan sporting contests, especially on the cricket pitch, are a good example, irrespective of the public rhetoric, of the fusion of sport and nationalism. Indeed, anthropologist Arjun Appadurai has described India-Pakistan contests as "thinly disguised national wars". The handshake controversy, followed by Suryakumar's dedication of the victory to the "bravery" of India's "armed forces" was yet another iteration of that, as was the on-field celebration of Pakistani opener Sahibzada Farhan, who mimicked the firing of an AK-47 upon reaching his half century, and Haris Rauf's gestures depicting the downing of aircraft in an apparent reference to the recent India-Pakistan conflict. On the flipside, cricket has also been a tool to foster better relations between India and Pakistan, leading to coinage of the term "cricket diplomacy". India and Pakistan played against each for the first time on the cricket field in 1952. The series was an example of sport bringing together two nations only five years after their birth in the midst of unprecedented violence, suffering and war. Since then, there have been many instances of cricket cutting through animosity, albeit fleetingly. Perhaps the best example of this was the so-called "friendship series" in 2004 when India toured Pakistan for the first time in 14 years not too long after the Kargil war and the terror attack on Parliament. Prime Minister (PM) AB Vajpayee put the series into perspective when he famously said: "Khel hi nahin, dil bhi jitiye (Win not only matches, but hearts too)". Some 20,000 Indians crossed over to Pakistan to watch the games resulting in an unprecedented people to people exchange. After the Mumbai terror attack in 2008 though, cricketing ties have nosedived. Pakistani players were shunned in the Indian Premier League after 2008 and continue to be banned. However, while bilateral tours were put off, cricket diplomacy was not dead. When India and Pakistan played each other at Mohali in the semi-final of the 2011 cricket World Cup, Pakistani PM Yousuf Raza Gilani was invited for the match and watched it in the company of his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh. Though Shashi Tharoor has noted that "cricket will follow diplomacy, not precede it", the game has occasionally played a role in thawing relations when other doors were shut. The Asia Cup, however, marks a nadir for cricket diplomacy. It is ironic that this is happening in an inconsequential tournament that commercially exploits the India-Pakistan rivalry to the maximum. India and Pakistan are almost always placed in the same group in the tournament, alongside other weaker cricketing nations, so as to ease the path for qualification of both into the second stage. The possibility of a third India-Pakistan game is also open if both make it to the final as has happened this time. While cricket diplomacy might be dying a slow death, the India-Pakistan rivalry on the field too seems to be sputtering. After the second match, Suryakumar questioned the status of the rivalry, pointing to the lopsided nature of the contest where Pakistan has won only once against India in the ODI and T20 world cups. The yawning gap has taken some of the sting out of the India-Pakistan games despite the best efforts of the respective cricket boards to keep relations on the boil. Both the claims about India's on-field superiority and the nationalistic fervour outside will be tested tonight....