BRADMAN STILL THE BEST BY A BIT

On the eve of Sachin Tendulkar’s hundred hundred (it’s been a long eve, 22 innings and counting) and coming after India’s memorable and deserved World Cup win, there has been a distinct push to anoint him as the world’s greatest ever batsmen. Not best now, or most prolific or best in the last 20 years but best ever batsman, the Greatest Of All Time. Of course, in any discussion of this nature, the white elephant in the room will always be Sir Donald Bradman, the owner of the game’s most famous batting average (99.94), the player that Tendulkar may have usurped in the eyes of many. Recently, this push has not only come from his adoring Indian public but also from fellow Australians. In a book published that collated the views of test cricketers concerning the greatest Australian XI, no fewer than 4 ex-players decided not to include Bradman in their team at all. Reasons for his non-inclusion included his dressing room divisiveness (it’s fair to say that he wasn’t universally loved by his team-mates) while some cited concerns that he would have struggled in today’s game.  I’m sure that these four were much better cricketers than myself but that doesn’t mean that their views are correct. In my mind, this is an incredulous decision. For me, Bradman remains firmly ensconced on his throne as greatest of them all. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why Bradman deserves to maintain his crown and why Tendulkar has to be content with playing second fiddle. 

Tendulkar and Bradman.

Reason # 1 Hundreds per innings

Tendulkar has scored 51 test centuries (and another 48 in ODI cricket, a format of the game that wasn’t around when Bradman played). This is far and away the greatest number of test centuries scored, 11 more than Jacques Kallis from South Africa and 22 more than Bradman. However, Bradman scored his hundreds in only 80 innings (it took Tendulkar 159 innings to score his first 29 hundreds). Bradman scored a hundred in 36.3% of his innings, at double the rate of any of the other players who have 29 or more centuries (Tendulkar is next best, scoring a hundred in 16.6% of his innings). Another startling Bradman stat is that he converted 12 of his 29 centuries into 200s (a conversion rate of 100s to 200s of 41.4%). 15% of his innings led to a double century. Only 2% of Tendulkar’s innings have resulted in him scoring 200 or more runs. 

Bradman scored at a fast rate and  made huge scores on a regular basis.

Reason # 2 Average compared with contemporaries

It’s often argued that Bradman’s stats are inflated because the quality of bowling and fielding he faced during his career was poor. Fielding has certainly improved rapidly over the past two decades but the extent that it has limited or reduced the scoring potential of batsmen is not easily quantifiable. It’s often said that the bowling was poorer during Bradman’s era, the bowlers slower and less aggressive than they are now. However, this doesn’t quite match with players like England’s Harold Larwood, of Bodyline fame, who is estimated to have been a 90mph bowler, a match for some and better than most of today’s group of bowlers.  Even if this were the case, it would be reasonable to expect that other players who played around the same time would also have similarly inflated averages. Looking at the averages of their contemporaries shows that this is not the case. Both Bradman and Tendulkar have scored the most runs and centuries of any player who played at the same time as them. Where the difference lies is comparing their averages against those of their contemporaries. Of players who scored more than a thousand runs during Bradman’s career (he scored 6996), no one has a better average than his (that famous 99.94). The closest anyone gets to this is fellow Australian, Arthur Morris, who averaged 74 in 17 tests from 1946-1948 (over all tests, Morris’s average dropped to 46). To illustrate Bradman’s dominance, the next best player still averaged 25 runs less than him, and could only maintain such statistics for a short period of time, not over 20 years like Bradman. To further illustrate the point, of the top 15 run scorers during Bradman’s career, only 3 players averaged more than 60. In comparison, while Tendulkar has scored the most runs, 1 of the top 15 run scorers during his career (Kallis) actually averaged slightly more than him. Some people more cynical than I might even ask whether Tendulkar is the greatest batsmen in the current Indian team, a question probably not asked often of Bradman.While people bemoan the quality of bowling during Bradman’s time, there are similar concerns over the quality of bowling and the pre-dominance of batsmen in the current era. For example, in the 1980s, an era of quality quick bowlers, only 6 players averaged over 50, in the 1990s, seven. By contrast, in the first decade of this century, 21 players averaged 50 or more with a further seven averaging 49. It seems that it wasn’t just Bradman who played in a batsmen dominated era. Tendulkar, of course, has batted in an era of covered pitches, shorter boundaries, protective equipment and video analysis, all of which make batting easier. Bradman had to deal with uncovered pitches and no protective gear. In perhaps one of the toughest series of all time, Bodyline, Bradman had to deal with tactics deemed so negative and dangerous to players that they were soon banned but still averaged 56, which is Tendulkar’s overall career average.

Tendulkar; the best of the modern era but not better than the Don just yet.

Reason #3 Playing in different countries

Cricket is maybe unique in that home advantage confers much more than just crowd support. Pitch conditions differ heavily from country to country and it takes a special player to excel in all of these conditions. Tendulkar is one of these special players. He has played test cricket against 9 countries in 10 different countries, averaging at least 40 in every country he’s played in. On the other hand, much has been made of the fact that Bradman only played cricket in two countries (England and Australia) and only played against four teams (England, South Africa, West Indies and India). It is possible that Bradman might have struggled in the sub-continent. After all, Ricky Ponting, the closest to a Bradman- like figure in recent Australian teams, only averages 26 in India and 43 in Asia, well below his overall average of 53. Bradman was known to struggle initially in his innings against high-quality spin, as best exemplified by his dismissal in his final test innings, to Eric Hollies, the English leg-spinner. It remains a classic what-if. In Bradman’s defence, Australia only played six tests outside of Australia/England during his career, a five-test tour of South Africa in 1935/36 and a one-off test against New Zealand, a game where they bowled New Zealand out for 42 and 54. Australia didn’t tour the West Indies or India until 1955 and 1956 respectively. Given the respective strengths (or lack of) of India, the West Indies and New Zealand at the time, you could argue that Bradman would have filled his shoes, like modern day batsmen do against Zimbabwe or Bangladesh now and boosted his average even higher. Would it diminish Tendulkar’s legacy if Afghanistan, Kenya and Ireland were admitted to test cricket in the next 20 years, countries that he would have never played in and therefore never scored runs in? No, it wouldn’t, so why should Bradman’s achievements be lessened by where he could play test cricket.

Sachin celebrating another milestone.

4-External pressures

It’s often said that Tendulkar bats with the weight of a billion people on his shoulders, that he lives inside a bubble, unable to enjoy things like going for walks without getting mobbed. It’s said that it is this pressure that places Tendulkar above Bradman, because Bradman didn’t have this weight of expectation. While Bradman didn’t have to cope with the expectations of a billion, he did have to cope with being a national hero during the Great Depression, to bat against the English when they employed their now infamous Bodyline tactics, and then lead a team to England and try to raise the morale of both Australia and England after the Second World War when his best years were seemingly behind him. Bradman, like Tendulkar, had a great deal of pressure to cope with in his career. Bradman also proved to be a capable captain. Captaincy didn’t seem to affect his batting as he averaged slightly more as captain than his over-all career average. Tendulkar, on the other hand, never seemed to be a comfortable captain and averaged 51 during his captaincy, still respectable but less than his average of 57 when he wasn’t the captain (his average was similarly affected when he was the captain of the one day team, averaging 37 as captain compared to 46 when not).

Bradman was the centre of attention wherever he went.

This is not a rant on how bad Tendulkar is. It’s clear that he has been the standout batsman of the last 20 years and probably the best since Bradman. Bradman himself said that Tendulkar was the player who reminded him the most of himself. Tendulkar far exceeds Bradman in the mass number of games he has played. In 20 plus years, he has played 170 Tests, 453 One Day internationals, some 20/20 games as well as about another 100 first class and list A games. Add in the fact that he has done a lot of travelling, playing matches in over twenty countries and without missing much cricket through injury, his performances (and he is performing as well as ever even at the age of 37) are magnificent. Bradman in contrast only managed to play 52 tests,(his career shortened by World War 2), playing 232 first class games in total during his twenty-year career. This was limited due to injury, illness, the paucity of cricket played and the war. ODIs and 20/20 cricket and their associated rigours didn’t exist during Bradman’s time. 

All I wanted to show was that Bradman is a type of sporting freak. Wisden, cricket’s famous almanac, said Bradman was “the greatest phenomenon in the history of cricket, indeed in the history of all ball games”. Statistician Charles Davis analyzed the statistics for several prominent sportsmen (Ty Cobb, Pele, Jack Nicklaus and Michael Jordon, Bjorn Borg and others) by comparing how far they stood above their contemporaries.  His study showed that “no other athlete dominates an international sport to the extent that Bradman does cricket”. In order to be as dominant as Bradman, a baseballer would have to average close to .4 and a basketballer would have to average 43 points a game over their career. A tennis player would have to win 20 grand slam titles in 10 years (although Federer got close to this with 16 titles in the past nine years). A golfer would have to win more than 25 major titles. A soccer player would have to average a goal a game over 100 games. To show how rare Bradman is, you would expect statistically, that there would be someone of his quality in one of every 184,000 batsmen who play test cricket (in 130 years of test cricket, less than 10,000 players have played which statistically speaking means it would take about 2,500 years for someone as successful as Bradman to come along). Bradman is a statistical freak, unlikely to ever be match. He remains an icon of cricket and of Australia where he has been honoured and eulogized in song, plays and movies. When Nelson Mandela first met an Australian after his release from prison, his first question was whether or not Bradman was still alive. That shows how big a deal Bradman was and still is. All I know for sure is that Tendulkar is the greatest batsmen I’ve seen so I know Bradman must have been extraordinary.