An interesting point. Bradman is a good example.
While he was playing he faced constant sniping and criticism, much of it from Australians. Most was unfair and may have been related to his personality.
Macartney referred to his batting as “crude hitting”. Gubby Allen said he was scared of fast bowling. Fingleton claimed he had a mental block on bad pitches and couldn't bat on them. Sutcliffe reckoned Hammond was a better player. Hobbs thought he was the best batsman in the world on good wickets only, adding the caveat that this was likely due to lack of experience on bad ones. Arlott did his research and was adamant that Hobbs was the greatest. Constantine, Ironmonger and Ebeling all said they found Ponsford a more formidable opponent.
A notable dissenting voice was Verity. Bradman was genuinely stung by the harsh criticism following a single failure against the Yorkshireman on a rain-damaged pitch in the second innings at Lord's in 1934. Four years later they met again on a similar surface at Bramall Lane in front of a crowd of 25,000. Now representing Yorkshire, Verity sensed that Bradman was determined to succeed and so he did, with scores of 59 and 42 and everything from Verity finding the middle of the bat. He made more runs in the match than noted wet-wicket masters Sutcliffe and Hutton combined, while his most persistent critic Fingleton managed 2 and 2.
Another on cool personal terms with Bradman, O'Reilly nevertheless rated him the greatest of all batsmen, despite his mate Grimmett disagreeing. Grimmett's assertion that Headley was the best on-side player he bowled to was a dig at The Don, who hit most of his boundaries on the leg side. Rhodes, a shrewd judge of few words, bowled to all the greats from Grace to Bradman and agreed with O'Reilly. Bodyline wasn't devised to combat Ponsford or Headley.
When Bradman retired, RC Robertson-Glasgow summed up in Wisden:
There were critics who found surfeit in watching him...It is but a short step from annoyance to envy, and Bradman has never been free from envy's attacks. So, when, first in 1930, he reeled off the centuries, single, double and treble, there were not wanting those who compared him unfavourably with other great ones – Trumper, Ranjitsinhji, Hobbs, Macartney. And Bradman's answer was more runs. Others perhaps could have made them, but they didn't.
However, as time passed, Bradman's reputation as a batsman comfortably surpassed all others. At the turn of the millennium, a year before his death, he was the only cricketer to receive a vote from all 100 judges invited by Wisden to choose their five cricketers of the twentieth century. Sobers received 90 as an all-rounder. Next was Hobbs with 30 votes. Of the others mentioned by Robertson-Glasgow in 1949, Trumper got four votes, Ranjitsinhji one and Macartney none.
Ranji might have been considered by some as belonging to the nineteenth century like Grace. But there is evidence that English writers began to pay him less attention following Indian independence. Where once he had ranked above Hammond, Hutton and Compton, now he received fewer plaudits than any of them. From a cricketing point of view this made little sense as Ranji never played a single first-class match in India, while Compton played ten games there, scoring over 1300 runs.
During the twenty-first century, doubts about Bradman's supremacy re-surfaced. This time most of the doubters were from India.
