Bradman- status as the greatest batsman ever under threat?

[Migara]

They did have a few good players but come on - you don't really believe that do you?

Huh!

 

[Dan]

Additionally, Bradman averaged 74 against WI whom he played scantily against. And the traits Martindale and Constantine and few others had over most English bowlers was fearsome pace and use of intimidatory short bowling. Had Bradman played equal % of matches against WI, he would have had his average dropped to low 80s. Then he never played WI in WI. And the "natural" pattern is to home bowlers to get better of the touring. It's blatant hogwash to say that Bradman did well against best team of the era. Best team against him was WI and he was lucky not to play them on their turfs. And we know WI were pretty poor compared to a modern day bottom of the table test nation (except BAN and ZIM). The misconception of doing well against the #1 team is massively overrated. Best opposition of an individual is not necessarily the #1 team of the era.

1. Which can be argued means the average is not necessarily a true reflection due to sample size.
2. Larwood and Voce say hi! They got Bradman's average down to 50 over a tiny sample size, through, you guessed it, fearsome pace and short bowling.
3. Assuming the 74 average is reflective and not simply an anomaly due to the sample size issue you yourself mentioned before.
4. Source? Did this really occur in the 1930s?
5. Best team of the era =/= best team against Bradman. Anyone suggesting that a WI team of Headley, Martindale and Constantine with little else was better than the 1930s English XI is deluded. If it weren't for Bradman demolishing all, that English side would be remembered as one of the greatest ever.
6. How can they possibly be the best of the era then? Australia and England were clearly superior to 2000s Bangladesh, if that is what you're suggesting.
7. And you've just accepted my criticism of point 5, hence invalidating that entire section of your post.



And FMD, an average of 74 is failure? Tough crowd.

 

[The Sean]

1. Which can be argued means the average is not necessarily a true reflection due to sample size.
2. Larwood and Voce say hi! They got Bradman's average down to 50 over a tiny sample size, through, you guessed it, fearsome pace and short bowling.
3. Assuming the 74 average is reflective and not simply an anomaly due to the sample size issue you yourself mentioned before.
4. Source? Did this really occur in the 1930s?
5. Best team of the era =/= best team against Bradman. Anyone suggesting that a WI team of Headley, Martindale and Constantine with little else was better than the 1930s English XI is deluded. If it weren't for Bradman demolishing all, that English side would be remembered as one of the greatest ever.
6. How can they possibly be the best of the era then? Australia and England were clearly superior to 2000s Bangladesh, if that is what you're suggesting.
7. And you've just accepted my criticism of point 5, hence invalidating that entire section of your post.

And FMD, an average of 74 is failure? Tough crowd.

Aside from the utterly laughable assertion that the WI attack was the best Bradman faced, it's also worth noting that one third of Bradman's dismissals that series came at the hands of a spinner with a Test bowling average in the 40s.

So really, Bradman was just **** against second-rate spin!

 

[fredfertang]

So really, Bradman was just **** against second-rate spin!

The Kevin Pietersen of his age!

 

[The Sean]

I do love how when Bradman was phenomenal (which was most of the time) there has to be a caveat about the opposition, or the sample size, or the conditions, but a series where Bradman was below par (like averaging a mere 70-odd) is irrefutable proof for all time that he'd been found out and would never have played any better.

 

[The Sean]

The Kevin Pietersen of his age!

Ha ha, exactly.

 

[honestbharani]

I do love how when Bradman was phenomenal (which was most of the time) there has to be a caveat about the opposition, or the sample size, or the conditions, but a series where Bradman was below par (like averaging a mere 70-odd) is irrefutable proof for all time that he'd been found out and would never have played any better.

It is a toilet debate, Sean.. So why act surprised when most of the points are crap and piss?

 

[watson]

1. Which can be argued means the average is not necessarily a true reflection due to sample size.
2. Larwood and Voce say hi! They got Bradman's average down to 50 over a tiny sample size, through, you guessed it, fearsome pace and short bowling.
3. Assuming the 74 average is reflective and not simply an anomaly due to the sample size issue you yourself mentioned before.
4. Source? Did this really occur in the 1930s?
5. Best team of the era =/= best team against Bradman. Anyone suggesting that a WI team of Headley, Martindale and Constantine with little else was better than the 1930s English XI is deluded. If it weren't for Bradman demolishing all, that English side would be remembered as one of the greatest ever.
6. How can they possibly be the best of the era then? Australia and England were clearly superior to 2000s Bangladesh, if that is what you're suggesting.
7. And you've just accepted my criticism of point 5, hence invalidating that entire section of your post.



And FMD, an average of 74 is failure? Tough crowd.

Migara did not say:

Best team of the era =/= best team against Bradman. Anyone suggesting that a WI team of Headley, Martindale and Constantine with little else was better than the 1930s English XI is deluded

Rather he said:

Best team against him was WI and he was lucky not to play them on their turfs

.

There is a subtle difference.

But as you've pointed out, the sample size of 5 Tests is not large enough to draw any major conclusions. But by the same token I was still surprised that Bradman accumulated scores of 4-25-43-0 during the series.

 

[Dan]

He also said:

It's blatant hogwash to say that Bradman did well against best team of the era

Which, in the context of the post, was definitely implying the West Indies - at least by my interpretation. If he meant Australia, well, that analysis is slightly problematic - its hardly Bradman's fault he didn't do well at Test level against Australia. If he meant England, an average of 90 is clearly 'doing well', which led me to suggest he meant the West Indies.

 

[the big bambino]

At the risk of upsetting Dan I have a hard and fast rule that whenever Migara enters a discussion it has reached its putrid nadir. Its time to emerge from the bile and sludge and take your points somewhere else, which I'll get to in a mo'.

As an aside it is, as The Sean explained, ridculous to read anything into DGB's ave against the WI. Just as stupid reading anything into Richard's failure in a series v Pakistan in circa 1977. Only a fool would deduce any meaning out of such entrails.

Kyear, I'll restate we both know who the bowlers are. I have a different pov and I think I can rate it and yours against impartial stats. Thats the best way of doing things. Before going any further I'll say you place an over emphasis on individual bowlers. Yes facing great bowlers is important but they don't represent the quality of a team's bowling overall as Hadleigh's NZ and Murali's SL prove.

I'm still working on my comparison. I'll post it in my Bradman Effect thread. Read it or not up to you. I want to post it there to keep all my stuff on DGB's runs in the same place. Neither do I want to discuss it on this thread for the reason mentioned earlier. What I will say now is that the top 5 bowling teams when both eras are combined (Viv's and DGB's up to the war) show the WI (IVA) top followed by Eng and Aus (DGB), then Pak and Oz (IVA). Raw stats these. No Bradman effect deducted. I will do that though and adjust for minnows to make your qualifications about Bradman's success accountable. Btw the WI in DGB's era were far from the best and it is laughable for anyone to state that. As said the stats show the WI (IVA) to be the best group. That is what you'd expect and compels all of us to admit the stats tell the truth over our opinions. After all you can't say they are right abt 1st posn but wrong abt 2nd and 3rd (with any credibility I mean).

 

[Jono]

I do love how when Bradman was phenomenal (which was most of the time) there has to be a caveat about the opposition, or the sample size, or the conditions, but a series where Bradman was below par (like averaging a mere 70-odd) is irrefutable proof for all time that he'd been found out and would never have played any better.

Mate you're a sucker for punishment aren't you?

 

[Ruckus]

6. How can they possibly be the best of the era then? Australia and England were clearly superior to 2000s Bangladesh, if that is what you're suggesting.

Be interested to know why you think this so unequivocally.

 

[Dan]

We covered this in the last thread. Regardless of whether the standard has increased or not in absolute terms (since I'm not devoting the next six hours to repeating the same posts and going nowhere; I have an exam to study for), relative to the other sides of the era, 1930s England is clearly better (in these relative terms) than 2000s Bangladesh. They were actually able to win Test matches, for one.

Whether Len Hutton shapes up to Tamim Iqbal in absolute terms is completely irrelevant to me, because it strips the player of context and makes too many assumptions. If we take Hutton to be the best of his era by a significant amount*, that dominance over peers is what gets him into ATG sides. The argument that the standard of cricket has improved over time does not come into considerations when rating players and teams for mine.

You seem to analyse in terms of the absolute, I analyse in terms of the relative. The terminology we use is coded with those meanings. I disagree with your position, you probably disagree with mine. And there's nothing wrong with that. Everyone having exactly the same opinion would pretty much suck.


*Please don't come back with something along the lines of "but Hutton didn't necessarily dominate his era by all that much" - it is an example, nothing more.

 

[watson]

Currently reading 'Cricket My World' by Walter Hammond (page 26);

The fastest bowlers of my time were Larwood, Constantine, Gregory, McDonald, McCormick, Wall, Voce, - and perhaps Gilbert, the Aboriginal.

Two from England, one from the West indies, five from Australia. You see? That is about the proportion in which fast bowlers were being produced then. Today, perhaps we have seen the last of the truly fast men, home-grown in England, for a generation.

If we take Hammond's list then Bradman only really had to contend with 3 fast bowlers during his time. However, Larwood disappeared after Bodyline, Voce was slower than even Wall (I assume that the list is in order of speed), and he hardly saw Constantine.

Therefore, it is reasonable speculation IMO to assume that Bradman's average would take a significant drop if he were to face modern bowling attacks on a regular basis such as Greg Chappell had to do, or conversely (the flip side of the same coin) a great modern batsman, adept at playing spin, would gain a large boost in his average if he went up against those forementioned bowlers. In other words, it seems obvious to me that Lara, Pollock, Sobers, Chappell, and either Richards would have a field-day - helmet or no helmet.

Conclusion: Bradman is not twice as good as all other great batsman as his average suggests, not even close.

Note: The overriding assumption is this whole discussion is that a pair of quality fast bowlers operating at either end of the pitch is THE toughest assignment possible for any batsman. Spinners like Underwood excel on 'sticky wickets', but this relatively unusual. On the whole, fast bowlers tend to win Test match series with spinners playing the (valuable) support role.

 

[fredfertang]

The only bowlers who dismissed Bradman 10 times were Verity and Grimmett, the latter only bowled against him 27 times

The rest of the list is

Bedser 8
Larwood and Tate, 7
O'Reilly 6
Bowes and Wall, 5

 

[Ruckus]

Regardless of whether the standard has increased or not in absolute terms, relative to the other sides of the era, 1930s England is clearly better (in these relative terms) than 2000s Bangladesh.

That statement cannot be brushed aside like it has so significance to your argument. It is of crucial significance. And this is why: if the standards were worse in absolute terms, then you cannot use relative analysis to make the conclusions you have. It does not matter how good a team was relative to other teams, because it is still within the context of different standards. It is just as fallacious as saying 'NSW are dominant relative to other Sheffield Shield teams, therefore they must be better than Bangladesh who are not dominant in test cricket'. If you believe standards have improved in absolute terms, then you cannot make comparisons between teams from different eras based on their relative dominance. The best you can do is say 'X team was better than Y team in absolute terms', however, that is an unfair, and myopic, statement when trying to compare teams from different eras, because the 'products of their environment' issues can't be ignored.

 

[The Sean]

Mate you're a sucker for punishment aren't you?

I get bored easily.

 

[Dan]

That statement cannot be brushed aside like it has so significance to your argument. It is of crucial significance. And this is why: if the standards were worse in absolute terms, then you cannot use relative analysis to make the conclusions you have. It does not matter how good a team was relative to other teams, because it is still within the context of different standards. It is just as fallacious as saying 'NSW are dominant relative to other Sheffield Shield teams, therefore they must be better than Bangladesh who are not dominant in test cricket'. If you believe standards have improved in absolute terms, then you cannot make comparisons between teams from different eras based on their relative dominance. The best you can do is say 'X team was better than Y team in absolute terms', however, that is an unfair, and myopic, statement when trying to compare teams from different eras, because the 'products of their environment' issues can't be ignored.

No, it isn't.

That's the entire point. If we take your version of events and say standards have changed, comparing Player A from standard 1 to Player B from standard 2 is pointless and stupid. Hence you rate them compared to their peers - how they did in that standard. I don't care if in 2340 every side turns out an XI who make Phil Tufnell look like Viv Richards, if a bowler gets them out twice as cheap as anyone else, he deserves to be lauded as an ATG because he dominated the game when he played it. Then, if you feel like it, you compare their relative merits to their respective eras to give you a very subjective comparison between the two. If you can't compare that way, these entire threads are meaningless and we should consider the last XI a team has put out as the best. Plus we then have to write off anyone who played before an arbitrary development marker as being **** and not worthy of consideration in ATG discussion. Which is very unfair on their achievements. As a side note, if standards have improved I think the development looks like this, given how rubbish the Australian batting is at the moment:

That's an incredibly false analogy, which, ironically, is a fallacy in itself. We're talking across time, not across level. My junior club may well dominate U/12E park cricket by a huge margin; that definitely does not mean they are 'better' than Bangladesh in the way you are suggesting they are.

Which is the crux of my argument as to why your approach doesn't work. Your analysis brushes them aside completely under the guise of 'development'. You know what else brushed aside sociocultural factors to claim superiority? Colonialism. And colonialism sucked for anyone not in that elite few. There's a logical fallacy for you, by the way.


I think ultimately you misunderstand the entire point of this discussion. It is not to find out who has the most skillz and is the best evar at hitting a five-and-a-half ounce chunk of red leather. That is not what greatest means, and that is not how you define greatest. Greatest refers to the impact you had on the game through that action. This notion that Imrul Kayes is technically and skillfully better at hitting a ball than Bradman has nothing whatsoever to do with Bradman's greatness. His greatness was defined by the way he dominated everything put in front of him by a margin we have never seen before or since.

 

[the big bambino]

Currently reading 'Cricket My World' by Walter Hammond (page 26);



If we take Hammond's list then Bradman only really had to contend with 3 fast bowlers during his time. However, Larwood disappeared after Bodyline, Voce was slower than even Wall (I assume that the list is in order of speed), and he hardly saw Constantine.

Therefore, it is reasonable speculation IMO to assume that Bradman's average would take a significant drop if he were to face modern bowling attacks on a regular basis such as Greg Chappell had to do, or conversely (the flip side of the same coin) a great modern batsman, adept at playing spin, would gain a large boost in his average if he went up against those forementioned bowlers. In other words, it seems obvious to me that Lara, Pollock, Sobers, Chappell, and either Richards would have a field-day - helmet or no helmet.

Conclusion: Bradman is not twice as good as all other great batsman as his average suggests, not even close.

Note: The overriding assumption is this whole discussion is that a pair of quality fast bowlers operating at either end of the pitch is THE toughest assignment possible for any batsman. Spinners like Underwood excel on 'sticky wickets', but this relatively unusual. On the whole, fast bowlers tend to win Test match series with spinners playing the (valuable) support role.

The list is qualified not definitive as Hammond as good as admits in his other book "cricket my destiny" mentioning men not listed in your quote as bowling with tremendous pace. I think the book was published in 48 after Hammond's last test and I can't explain the absence of Lindwall and Miller from it and on reflection I wonder how he could too. .

 

[Ruckus]

No, it isn't.

That's the entire point. If we take your version of events and say standards have changed, comparing Player A from standard 1 to Player B from standard 2 is pointless and stupid. Hence you rate them compared to their peers - how they did in that standard.

Precisely. You can compare them within the 'standard' of their time, you can't compare them outside of it.

I don't care if in 2340 every side turns out an XI who make Phil Tufnell look like Viv Richards, if a bowler gets them out twice as cheap as anyone else, he deserves to be lauded as an ATG because he dominated the game when he played it. Then, if you feel like it, you compare their relative merits to their respective eras to give you a very subjective comparison between the two. If you can't compare that way, these entire threads are meaningless and we should consider the last XI a team has put out as the best.

.

Correct, I don't believe you can compare that way with any decent amount of validity to your arguments. Different standards = too many variables to make a comparison valid.

Plus we then have to write off anyone who played before an arbitrary development marker as being **** and not worthy of consideration in ATG discussion. Which is very unfair on their achievements.

No, you basically answered this yourself. "It is not to find out who has the most skillz and is the best evar at hitting a five-and-a-half ounce chunk of red leather. That is not what greatest means, and that is not how you define greatest. Greatest refers to the impact you had on the game through that action. This notion that Imrul Kayes is technically and skillfully better at hitting a ball than Bradman has nothing whatsoever to do with Bradman's greatness. His greatness was defined by the way he dominated everything put in front of him by a margin we have never seen before or since.". ATG lists based on the relative ability of players are meaningless, ATG lists incorporating players based on their contributions to the sport are not.

That's an incredibly false analogy, which, ironically, is a fallacy in itself. We're talking across time, not across level. My junior club may well dominate U/12E park cricket by a huge margin; that definitely does not mean they are 'better' than Bangladesh in the way you are suggesting they are.

Which is the crux of my argument as to why your approach doesn't work. Your analysis brushes them aside completely under the guise of 'development'. You know what else brushed aside sociocultural factors to claim superiority? Colonialism. And colonialism sucked for anyone not in that elite few. There's a logical fallacy for you, by the way.

For the sake of the analogy it does not matter if it is across time or level. Both examples are ones were the standards are different. The fact you seem to be asserting that I am saying your junior club is better than Bangladesh tells me you simply haven't even read or understood the analogy properly. I am saying you can't make a conclusion like that. Reread it.

I have no idea what point you are trying to make in the last sentence quoted above.