Sport has always drawn from the language of war. Teams battle for honours.There is attack and defence. Sides lose or gain ground. Of course, there areweapons of destruction. Batsmen plunder runs. Rival teams are spoken of asenemies. Sport is combat and war metaphors are commonplace.
For the second time in four years, the Australian cricket team is now drawinginspiration from war itself on the eve of the Ashes series. Not that it needssuch inspiration, even if England is ranked second in the world behind it andAustralia has healthy respect for the home side.
Australian coach John Buchanan said the visit would help the players forge acloser team spirit. "It's more a life experience rather than a cricketexperience, (and) almost irrelevant to the tour to some degree," he said."We've got an opportunity to really expand everyone's horizons a little bitin terms off... (learning about) other Australians' experiences in a wartheatre. Individuals will carry it in their own way for the rest of the tour andthe rest of their lives."
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Back in 2001, Steve Waugh led his troops to Gallipoli in France. He was movedto write: "Looking up the cliffs, I tried to comprehend the mindset of thesoldiers as they tried to get a toehold on Turkish land and the fear they musthave felt at the thought of not going back home to loved ones.
"These men were real heroes and a clear perspective of the superlativesand tags we often get for merely playing a sport we love, I'm sure, wasn't loston the whole team. These soldiers gave much and lost so much more than we willever do. That lesson won't be forgotten."
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Such trips form a part of Cricket Australia's player education programme,aimed at teaching the cricketers about what it means to be Australian andunderlining the privileged position they hold in representing their country.Such trips are a lesson in humility, if nothing else.
The Board of Control for Cricket in India was unable to implement the idea ofgetting the Indian team to interact with Lt Col Rajyavardhan Rathore on the eveof the home series against Pakistan earlier this year. It is one thing to readthe Australian book and altogether another to implement it.
In fact, Indian cricket teams have visited Pietermartizburg in South Africa– retracing Father of the Nation Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's footsteps –but I am not sure how many players were emotionally affected by the trip as aWaugh or a Hayden was after the visit to Gallipoi in 2003.
Perhaps the only time some of India's cricketers were moved was in 1999 whenformer captain Kapil Dev and Ajay Jadeja visited an army hospital in Srinagar inthe wake of the Kargil War. Kapil, in fact, was so shaken by what he saw that hecalled for an end to India's cricket relations with Pakistan.
We do not have to imitate all that the Australians do but we must really beproud of our heritage – beyond sport. I do not know too many first-classcricketers who care a great deal for Indian cricket history, let alone Indianhistory at large.
