Cricinfo - Blogs - Different Strokes - Of cemeteries and cricket

Samir’s point about encouraging these young men to go and visit memorials in their own time is well made, but is there not also a value in a collective experience? I’m with Samir when it comes to visiting war graves as a corporate management training away day, but I suspect he would have no principled objection to a school organising such a trip for 16 of its pupils, and there is an argument that a lot of young professional cricketers are little more than school kids when it comes to life outside sport.

So while I certainly object to the publicity (and am acutely conscious of the hypocrisy involved in even looking at the photos), I am less sure than Samir that the event was flawed in principle.

But Samir appeared to be addressing the issue of war graves in general rather than specifically the First World War graveyards in Flanders, whose significance is now somewhat ambiguous.

Historians argue about the rights and wrongs of WW1 breaking out, but nearly all of them agree that the actual prosecution of the war was a disaster. The armies were commanded by men who had learned soldiering in the days before mechanised heavy artillery, machine guns and air power. The troops who died in their hundreds of thousands on Flanders fields were famously described (on both sides) as lions led by donkeys, who died for no great cause but because their commanders were boneheads unable to adapt to what war demanded of them in 1915 rather than 1885. Many cast their eyes over the endless acres of the Flanders cemeteries and see a monument to the horrifying consequences of human stupidity rather than a tribute to heroism.

If there is an analogue in today’s world of cricket, it’s that the cricketers are the poor bloody infantry being shoved around the world for 7-match ODI series by national boards run by twerps who either think or wish it was 1975, but this seems an unlikely lesson for the ECB to want to instill. But this is to go down the road of making sport comparable with war, and Samir was extremely persuasive on the undesirability of that.

I cannot bring myself to condemn the England management in 2009, nor the Australian management who led their team to WW1 memorials on previous trips: the players who have been have spoken of the humbling and thought-provoking nature of the experiences, and they may well have benefited in wholly laudable ways. But I do still wonder whether they were wise.

I completely disagree. In the first place war cemeteries are useless and the space allocated for them would be better utilized for growing crops that could be sent to starving children in India and Africa. That would be a better memory and gives purpose for whatever memorial you're trying to get all emotional about. Also if cricketers were to visit these farms and pay their respects, the experience on the whole could be more touching, profound, thought-provoking, humbling etc etc (thanks for whatever) and might increase general public awareness while solving a genuine evil in the world. Coaches should send their cricketers to do some service in the UN Food associate if they want them to take away how little cricket means when there are many starving children in India. And South Africa.

I am in general agreement with AJAX.Instead of wasting acres and acres of land through out the world on burying people, why not just cremate the bodies and use that real estate for other works: forests, agriculture, infrastructure development, etc.
Now I am going to present a wholly different perspective which although may seem irresponsible/inhumane, once you give it a serious thought it may actually put you on a perception course that could solve many of our problems.It is that, we should not hero worship people who died at war.I mean yes treat them with respect but give them equal respect as you would give any other human.Its this hero worship that makes kids wanna become soldiers.The more the soldiers the more money needed to maintain armies.The more money needed the more wars to invade foreign lands in the name of "liberation" and station your army so the cost is borne by them.More wars mean more war heroes.Its a vicious cycle.Let us end it!