Good post.
Hmmm, it's fairly well-established that, at his peak, Bradman was an innovator as much as a great batter, pretty much uncoached and completely unwilling to toe the technical line, used his feet a lot, etc. Bit of a rebel in general. Wild speculation but if there's one bloke from that era who'd have embraced T20 as a player, it would have been him I reckon.
Yea I can believe that. But Larwood was surely faster than, say, a McGrath. That's the whole point. Even if we agree that bowling speeds have increased slightly, there is not much correlation between bowling speed and bowling quality. Hence while discussing quality, I think that slight increase in pace has even more miniscule result.
He was never a big fan of ODI. No doubt if he was playing now he would take the money and who would blame him. What would the IPL pay for him?
Is anyone actually arguing that if he was time warped to this era he would outperform everyone? In any case, Bradman clearly must have had some exceedingly superior innate qualities like hand-eye coordination or concentration to have succeeded like he did. Something like technical prowess, in itself, just doesn't explain why he was so much better than the rest of the field (if that was the case, all of the other players with sound techniques should have enjoyed similar peaks). If you assume he had some superior innate qualities, those are the kind of things that would transcend time. If he was brought up in this era, he would be able to modify his technique to fit with the game, but the innate core qualities which probably explain his success would surely remain.
What is pace alone? Brett Lee is among he fastest bowlers of all time and he's easily the "worst" (if that's an appropriate word) to take 300 plus test wickets. You see bowlers who are extremely quick go the distance because batsmen are conditioned to it. Without movement or good line and length, even the fastest bowlers get belted.
There is fairly strong evidence he did have such qualities such as incredible hand-eye.
Ya, and so has been grade cricket, school cricket and FC cricket.
I'm not a Bradman fanatic, I just don't accept that it was easier for him to score runs than it has been for any other batsman in any other era. Of course the game is different. Some of those changes have made it harder for batsmen. (General increase in fielding standards, for instance, the end of timeless tests, changes in lbw law, reduced overs per day) A LOT of them have made life easier for batsmen (covered wickets, better equipment, faster outfields, shorter boundaries, the toll the current international calendar, multiple formats, and back-to-back tests takes on bowlers, for instance).
Same holds true for Tendulkar, Richards etc. No doubt the skills that they ascertained over the course of their careers could be transferred to Bradman's era if they were to fictionally grow up in that time. Yeah, he obviously had superior innate qualities in his play that made him stand out from his era but the extent to which these qualities make him stand out from every era skill-wise is hard to calculate.
The same does hold true for Tendulkar etc., but because he hasn't even dominated his own contemporaries very much at all (especially in terms of something like average) there is no reason to think he would dominate by a relatively higher amount back in Bradman's era. I agree, it is near impossible to calculate just how much Bradman would stand out in every era, but given his excessive dominance I would feel confident in just saying qualitatively, he would still dominate.
I'd actually consider you less 'sane' for that out-of-left-field prediction.
It's not that hard to gauge. Maybe not exactly but enough so to say he'd still be far and away the best. Cricket hasn't changed that much since Bradman played. The batting/bowling averages are usually within 3 point of each other through the decades and there have been overlaps in generations of greats and players. To suggest that cricket has changed to the point where the level below Bradman (the Laras, Richards, Chappells, Tendulkars, etc) could compare to him is to suggest a different sport is being played altogether IMO - you are talking about a make-up of almost 50 points on average.
