I have been involved in some very interesting discussions at Cricket Web’s forum “Cricket Chat”. The discussion is lively the participation vigorous and the attitude healthy and aggressive. When discussing players of earlier eras, one is naturally confronted with the partly disbelieving and partly incredulous responses from some of the younger members but the discussion is still very engrossing and brings out well thought out responses. As long as one stays politely away from or diplomatically equidistant from the few ever-emotional subjects like Warne versus Murali or Tendulkar versus Lara (now replaced by Tendulkar versus Ponting) one can have a most rewarding time amongst genuine cricket lovers at this delightful little cricket club of sorts.
I have decided to put on record some of the more interesting debates I have participated in over the years to give the public a flavour of what “Cricket Chat” can be like. As is understandable a debate, which may involve up to fifty members at a time, can go in several different directions at the same time. So, in order to maintain the continuity and flow of it I have taken the liberty of taking the debate from my point of view. Hence what you see and read here is my ‘say’ on the matter under discussion. This is interspersed with the comments and/or questions of others followed again by my response.
Hope you enjoy this peep into our little world of CC – as we love to call Cricket Chat- and maybe we will see you there too. I have made no changes to the original text accept correcting the minor (though irritating) typographical errors.
Over a year ago, some one asked on CC,
“How do you think he would go? Of course there is a lot more cricket being played (more Tests, ODIs T20), a lot of technology involved and a lot more scrutiny with every innings and it would of be awesome to see how he would have gone in India and had he the chance to play Zimbabwe and Bangladesh then BCL's record of 400 might have been under threat and arguably better bowlers.
So would have been just a run scoring genius back in the 30's and 40's or was he really over-rated because he never got to play cricket in more different conditions and was up against mainly the same type of bowlers. And if you listen to social, a lower standard of cricket and that he just brilliant beyond his peers? Just putting it out there.
And before I press "submit" and somebody wants to be a ****, I know he would be 100 this year and not alive, so if he was born in the mid to late 70's and was just as much of an active player as Jacques Kallis. And no irrelevant option this time.”
The initial responses were a bit guarded. There were some interesting ones however, like….
Bradman was supposedly weakest in 2 areas. a) Intimidating bowling and b) Playing on bad wickets and stickiest
Now with modern protective equipment and covered wickets his 2 main areas for criticisms no longer exist and are now irrelevant.
Add in new bat technology and his style of playing most balls and he would be near unstoppable.
OR
I'd be a bit surprised if Bradman didn't average a bit less should he have played in the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s or '90s (including 2000), but probably not that much less. Maybe 90 or so. Pitches in the 1930s were notoriously flat, and the quality of bowling, with a few exceptions, not great. Still, however, there remained the possibility of stickies.
Since 2001/02, pitches have once again been that flat, without the chance of stickies this time, and bowling-attacks probably roundly even worse. I'd not be terribly surprised if he'd averaged 130 or so had he debuted against New Zealand in November 2001.
What made Bradman special was not an "attitude ahead of his time" as some seem to think, but a skill that no batsman - with the possible exception of WG Grace, but IMO we can't totally compare those two - has ever possessed before or since. David Boon once said (probably not an exact estimate, but you get the drift) that he reckoned bowlers got him out 1 out of 10 dismissals, and himself the other 9. Now of course, there are times when both come into play simultaneously (i.e.: getting yourself out would be hitting a nothing ball to mid-wicket; the bowler and yourself getting you out would be chasing a full away-swinger outside off and edging to slip; and the bowler getting you out would be a straight ball which had to be played, was attempted to be defended, that swung away onto the edge and was taken by the wicketkeeper). But what made Bradman special was that this happened with an enormously lesser ratio than anyone else. Where most batsmen played a bad shot, say, every 30 balls on average, Bradman played one maybe every 130. But a realistically unplayable leg cutter to him was no different to one to any other batsman.
I'm not sure if anyone has given an estimate of how far Bradman's average is dragged down by stickies - if so, I'd reckon that'd be about what he'd average post-2001/02.
After a brief couple of sentences I made a detailed response to this ‘thread’, which was called: -
If Bradman Played Today’s Era
It is amazing how much we would like to run down those whom we have not seen.
I have heard so many arguments to try and assert why the players of the past were not good enough. For batsmen it is mostly easier to do with sheer statistics (mainly batting average) since these have generally got better after the relatively modest ones of the earlier years. For bowlers, people use the same lower batting averages to prove that wickets were easy to get. Where both don’t work we resort to quality of wickets (good if we are trying to run down batsmen and bad if we are tying put down the bowlers), poor batting or bowling depending upon what we are trying to prove, quality of opposition and so on.
Unfortunately, for these people most of these 'attempts at punditry' fail when you come to the one and only, Don Bradman. So staggering are his accomplishments with the bat and so mind boggling the stats (the sole criteria by which the average fan is capable of assessing "greatness" and "relative greatness" that we are neatly divide into two groups those (the majority) who think Bradman was the God of batting and there will, probably, never be another like him or those who try even harder to show that he was just lucky to be born at a time when someone of his caliber was more than abundantly rewarded for his great but 'not-that-great' skills.
Bradman is a phenomenon that cricket buffs are alternatively, fascinated and intimidated by but a large number are very reluctant to put him so much above their own more recent heroes. This was the case even when he was playing. To start with those in England refused to accept what they were told by the English tourists of 1928-29 when they came back with tales of this 'boy-wonder'. He will know what batting is all about on our English wickets was the cry.
Bradman came to England and in 3 of the 7 innings that he played in the five tests he scored a total of 23 runs (8, 1 and 14) but around these three innings he played another four in which he scored 131, 254, 334 and 232. Every record that could possibly be broken in a single series was broken by this 22 year old including the world's highest innings score and a still standing 974 runs in the series.
More was to come.
Jardine realised (even if we don’t) after just that one series (even if we don’t after 75 years) that this man was extraordinary and nothing short of spectacularly extraordinary tactics would stop this phenomenon and bodyline and Larwood became history and part folklore. Richards is gone and Tendulkar is coming to the end of his long innings and no one has been driven to the desperation that the captains around the world were driven by this man and yet we want to undermine his achievements.
Mostly when I read the stuff written in this regard, I smile and beyond a cryptic remark or two avoid getting into a debate but I think there is a need to soberly and logically put Bradman's achievements in perspective for the younger generation.
I have always maintained that it is futile to compare great sportsmen, more so when there is much time separating the two. Its pointless this argument of Warne versus Grimmett or O'reilly or Lilley versus Lindwall. These are great players who would have been great in any era. Of course, we can take delight in choosing our heroes and getting into a debate over a pint of beer over it but we must, in our hearts realise that it is a futile exercise and to take it with the seriousness that some people do here is simply not worth it.
Bradman is the exception.
Why?
While you can’t compare two greats of different eras, we can and do talk of the greats of an era. Thus most people agree that Lara and Tendulkar are the two premier batsmen of the modern era. That McGrath is the greatest exponent of the new ball in the modern times. We are able to do that, not just because we have seen everyone but also because the achievements of these greats are so overwhelmingly above those of their contemporaries. This is the only, if any, criteria by which a sportsman has to be judged - in comparison to his contemporaries.
This, in the case of Bradman, gives us a tool to measure Bradman against other great batsmen over different eras.
Here is how.
I have taken for this, besides Bradman, Hammond (from more or less his own times), Gavaskar and Richards from the seventies and eighties and Lara from the modern times. I have taken only players whose careers have ended hence Tendulkar is not chosen. If someone insists, I can do that but the results wont disprove what I am about to show.
I have taken the career stats of each of these players and compared it to the rest of the batsmen - in the world - during the exact duration of his career. Thus the batting averages of all the batsmen in the world (put together) during Gavaskar's test career are compared to his. Of course, since Gavaskar is a specialist batsman (and a great one at that) his average will be much higher than the rest of the world average. But this difference (in percentage) by which Gavaskar's average is superior to his contemporaries gives us a factor, which can be figured out for each of these great batsmen.
So, if Gavaskar averaged 51.12 in test matches and the rest of the world averaged 30.08 during the same period, Gavaskar's average is 1.70 times or 70% higher than the rest.
Here are the figures for these great batsmen. I have also included how much they are superior to their own countrymen because that maybe of interest to some.
Player Over ROW* Over countrymen
Richards 68 % 64%
Gavaskar 70% 75%
Brain Lara 76% 109%
Hammond 94% 77%
Bradman 227% 213%
*Rest of the World
The difference is staggering. That is why Bradman stands alone atop the tree of great batsmen. Its not because his contemporaries were useless because they included all time greats like Hammond , George Headley , Herb Sutcliffe , Len Hutton , Denis Compton , Bruce Mitchell , McCabe, Hendren , Woodfull , Ponsford , Leyland, Bill Edrich, Eddie Paynter, Morris, Barnes, Dempster, Duleepsinhji, Nourse, Jardine, Bill Brown, Hassett. The list is endless and very impressive and yet Bradman averages 3.27 times the world average score per innings over the twenty-year period.
There is absolutely nothing in cricket that comes even remotely close to the domination exercised by Bradman over his contemporaries over a twenty-year period. That’s why EVERY other batsman in the world dwarfs by comparison.
That’s why we can only assume that if we had the great fortune to have had him in our times we would have gone to our graves happily for he would not have missed that three figure mark (for his average) by the nano-whisker that he did in 1948
Comment: Could you do a similar analysis of W.G.'s first-class career from its beginning to the end of the 1870s?
A quick look at Grace's stats
WG Grace for his times was as great a cricketer as Bradman was in his. This alone makes him worthy of being placed at the very top of any shortlist of all time great cricketers. Unfortunately we tend to look at his stats and tell ourselves
· Come on he averaged just 32.3 in test matches.
· His first class average at 39.45 is no great shakes either (remember Bradman averaged in the nineties)
· If a fat fifty year old was playing active cricket the standards couldn't be that great could they?
And so on and so forth
What we need to understand is
1. When test cricket started, it wasn't considered the ultimate to participate. The English domestic cricket was THE cricket. Many players did not take interest in it and opted out of an opportunity to play tests particularly if there was money to be made elsewhere.
2. WG played his first test at 32, his second at 34, his 3rd at 36!! By the time he played his 9th test he was 40.
3. He did not go to Australia for ALL the first eight tours England made down under!! and he was by a zillion miles England's (and the world's premier batsman of the times).
4. He was in his 44th year and well past his prime when he played his first test in Australia.
5. The fact that he played till past fifty does not mean he was as good a player at fifty as he was when younger. He was well past his prime. It’s just that he was still good enough to play first class cricket. Surely it affected his averages as it would affect any player's (including Bradman) if he continued playing competitive cricket well past his prime. That’s why instead of looking at Grace's figures in totality over the entire career, we need to first understand that he was at his prime in his twenties and early thirties and then declined as any cricketer would.
Here are WG's first class figures broken up by decades to show how he declined, as he grew older.
WG was born in 1848, so I have taken him to be 20 years old in 1968, 40 years old in 1988 and so on. I have taken full calendar year records even though he was born in July because the records are available more easily on calendar year (English domestic season mainly) basis.
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