[Richard]

Originally Posted by vic_orthdox

As I've brought up a couple of times, its his mental skills that must've been so far ahead of anyone else. I could play against U/16s for the rest of my cricketing career, and I wouldn't average 100, and consistently make those scores, because I'd allow myself to get overconfident, or make a stupid mistake. Bradman didn't let himself do that against the best players in the world at that time. Hence he made such enormous scores.

Basically, exactly as I said...

Originally Posted by Richard

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 simualtaneously (ie: 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 legcutter to him was no different to one to any other batsman.