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Bradman's record on sticky wickets?

karan316

State Vice-Captain
Read in one of the articles that Bradman scored just 284 runs in 15 innings he played on sticky wickets, is this true? If not, what were the exact numbers, and are there any detailed stats on how many overs of "fully-fit" Larwood that Bradman played.

Again, I'll be clear with my point, I don't rate Bradman ahead of the batsmen from the next eras, nor do I like it when others are compared with him. Cross era comparisons are usually senseless. With the help of this thread, I just want to know more about his record in difficult conditions.
 
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fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
Also, is there a complete explanation of how much of "fully fit" Larwood did Bradman face?
He was fully fit in 28/29, and in 32/33 was in his own opinion fitter than he had ever been, till he broke a bone in his foot in the fifth Test which was the end of him as an express bowler. In 1930 he played in three Tests and achieved very little - he missed the second Test with stomach problems and was dropped for the fourth. The gastritis apart he was fit, but suffered with dental problems all summer, and I know from personal experience how debilitating that can be, so I like to think that affected him. But the figures say Bradman had his measure in 1930, and even in the last Test when he gave Bradman a hard time (and the seed of Bodyline was, on some accounts, sown) Bradman still scored plenty from him
 

marc71178

Eyes not spreadsheets
Read in one of the articles that Bradman scored just 284 runs in 15 innings he played on sticky wickets, is this true? If not, what were the exact numbers, and are there any detailed stats on how many overs of "fully-fit" Larwood that Bradman played.

Again, I'll be clear with my point, I don't rate Bradman ahead of the batsmen from the next eras, nor do I like it when others are compared with him. Cross era comparisons are usually senseless. With the help of this thread, I just want to know more about his record in difficult conditions.
If you don't rate Bradman ahead of people from future eras then I assume that you also think that no player from that era would even be good enough for current first class cricket?
 

Coronis

Cricketer Of The Year
If you don't rate Bradman ahead of people from future eras then I assume that you also think that no player from that era would even be good enough for current first class cricket?
I assume he's more saying that cross era comparisons in general are useless. Not that the skill level of test players from that era is that inferior to those now.
 

Jono

Virat Kohli (c)
If you don't rate Bradman ahead of people from future eras then I assume that you also think that no player from that era would even be good enough for current first class cricket?
His use of the word "rate" was a little misleading. Just meant he doesn't compare.
 

Viscount Tom

International Debutant
It;d be interesting to get a comparison of Bradman's record on stickies to other top batsman of the period.
 

kyear2

Cricketer Of The Year
I believe that Hobbs, Hutton and Headley were regarded to be master of the sticky wickets.
 

watson

Banned
The famous writer CLR James perhaps thought that Headley was superior to Bradman on 'wet or uncertain wickets' as he put it. James probably saw Headley through rose-tinted-glasses, but his argument laid out below isn't a bad one;

Headley: Nascitur Non Fit

By CLR James

.....What I want to draw special attention to here is George’s play on wet or uncertain wickets. Here are his scores on such wickets in England;

1933
V Northhamptonshire: 52 out of 129 (Other high scores: 32 and 15)
V Yorkshire: 25 out of 115 (Other high scores: 25 and 16)
V Nottinghamshire: 66 out of 314 (Other high scores: 54 and 51)
V Lancashire: 66 out of 174 (Other high scores: 29 and 18)
V Leistershire: 60 out of 156 (Other high scores: 22 and 19)
V Leveson-Gower’s XI: 35 out of 251 (Other high scores: 70 and 44)

1939
V Surrey: 52 out of 224 (Other high scores: 58 and 52)
V Yorkshire: 61 out of 234 (Other high scores: 72 and 28)
V England: 51 out of 133 & 5 out of 4/43 (Other high scores: 47 and 16 & 13 and 11)
V Somerset: 0 out of 84 (Other high scores: 45 and 17)
V Gloustershire: 40 out of 220 & 5 out of 162 (Other high scores: 50 and 28 & 43 and 26)


In those 13 innings George passed 50 seven times. Three times only he scored less than double figures, and in his other three innings his scores of were 25, 35 and 40. I believe those figures would be hard to beat. Look at a similar list made for Bradman by Ray Robinson in his fascinating book 'Between Wickets';

1928
Brisbane Test: 1 out of 66 (Top scorer: Woodfull 30 n.o)

1929
Sydney: 15 out of 128 (Top scorer: Fairfax 40)

1930
Notts Test: 8 out of 144 (Top scorer: Kippax 64 n.o)
Northants: 22 out of 93 (Top scorer: Bradman 22)
Glouster: 42 out of 157 (Top scorer: Ponsford 51)

1932
Perth: 3 out of 159 (Top scorer: McCabe 43)
Melbourne: 13 out of 19/2

1933
Sydney: 1 out of 180 (Top scorer: Rowe 70)

1934
Lords Test: 13 out of 118 (Top scorer: Woodfull 43)

1936
Brisbane Test: 0 out of 58 (Top scorer: Chipperfield 36)
Sydney Test: 0 out of 80 (Top scorer: O’Reilly 37 n.o)

1938
Middlesex: 5 out of 132 (Top scorer: Chipperfield 36)
Yorkshire: 42 out of 132 (Top scorer: Bradman 42)


In fifteen innings Bradman passed 50 only once, 40 only twice, and 15 only four times. His average is 16.66. George’s average is 39.85. You need not build on these figures a monument, but you cannot ignore them.

Bradman’s curious deficiency on wet wickets has been the subject of much searching comment. George’s superior record has been noticed before, and one critic, I think it was Neville Cardus, has stated that Headley has good claims to be considered an all wickets the finest of the inter-war batsman. I would not go that far. It is easy to give figures and make comparisons and draw rational conclusions. The fact remains that the odds were 10 to 1 that in any Test Bradman would make 150 or 200 runs, and the more runs were needed the more certain he was to make them. Yet if Bradman never failed in a Test series, neither did George. I believe Bradman and Headley are the only two between the wars of whom that can be said. Hammond failed terribly in 1930 in England and almost as badly in the West Indies in 1934-35.

But there is another point I wish to bring out. Between 1930 and 1938 Bradman had with him in England Ponsford, Woodfull, McCabe, Kippax, Brown, and Hassett. All scored heavily. In 1933 and 1939 West Indian batsan scored runs at various times, but George had nobody he could depend on. In 1933 his average in the Tests was 55.40. Among those who played regularly the next average was 23.83. In 1939 his average in Tests was 66.80. The next best batsman averaged 57.66, but of his total of 173 he made in 137 in one innings. Next was 27.50. It can be argued that this stiffened his resistance. I do not think so. And George most certainly does not. ‘I would be putting on my pads and sometimes before I has finished I would hear that the first wicket had gone.’ This is what he carried on his shoulders for nearly 10 years. None, not a single one of the great batsman, has ever been burdened for so long......
 
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Red

The normal awards that everyone else has
Bradman didn't grow up playing on stickies so whatever.

Australia doesn't have rain.
 

fredfertang

Cricket Web: All-Time Legend
For a bloke who was so incredibly single-minded about batting it always amazes when I read contemporaries of Bradman expressing the view that he batted like he cba on sticky wickets
 

watson

Banned
Bradman didn't grow up playing on stickies so whatever.

Australia doesn't have rain.
Aren't you from Melbourne Monk? Last I visited we had all 4 seasons in 1 day.

Also, Brisbane has a tropical climate with the usual thunderstorms that go with it. If we dig enough I'm sure that we could find scoresheets where NSW got stuck on sticky wickets at the Gabba.
 

watson

Banned
I'm sure I've read that some English players like Hammond thought that Jack Hobbs was the greater batsman of the two if all kinds are wickets and conditions are taken into account. But I can't find the actual reference to save my life.

I haven't read anything about Hutton or Sutcliffe being Bradman's superior on dodgy wickets though, despite them playing great innings on dodgy wickets.
 

watson

Banned
Interesting comments from a couple of Yorkshire openers.

Who's the next-best batsman after Bradman?

We all know who the greatest batsman of them all is, but who's second in line?

April 22, 2013

Geoff Boycott



In terms of figures and performances, making runs, and helping win matches, it has to be Don Bradman. The best. But the people in the era he played, think that on all types of pitches, and I repeat, on all types of pitches, John Berry Hobbs was the best player the world has ever seen.

Now, nobody can compete with Bradman on good batting pitches. His record is unbelievable. But you have to remember, right up to the 1970s, cricket was played on uncovered pitches in Test matches. In many of the hot countries, they didn't get much rain, so you hardly ever got a wet pitch - or a sticky dog, as they call it in Australia. But in places like New Zealand and England, where we get lots of rain, you never quite know what you are going to get. The pitches would be juicy. Even if they were not wet, the grass would make the ball move around.

Hobbs played 61 Tests. Remember, only England, Australia and South Africa played then. He averaged 56.94. It doesn't even come close to Bradman's 99.94. He played his first Test in 1907-08 and his last one in 1930.

He was the oldest of 12 children. He taught himself the game by actually using a cricket stump and a tennis ball in the fives court - which is very much like a squash court - at Jesus College, Cambridge, where his father was the groundsman and umpire for the college. With no formal coaching, Hobbs practised on his own through the long vacations, hitting the ball with a stump. He said in his autobiography, years later, that this was responsible for his ability to play predominantly off the back foot and to place the ball accurately.

I think this simple practice laid a wonderful foundation. As a boy Hobbs watched the older boys playing cricket at the college and tried to pick up things. He had no formal coaching; he became a natural batsman with hand-eye coordination and footwork, the neat, quick footwork you need to hit a tennis ball with a stump on a fives court.

This, to me, is what made him a great player on all sorts of pitches, where the ball turned alarmingly, where it jumped when it was wet. It was fascinating when I read that the greatest batsman ever, Bradman, born a few years later, used the same method as a child when he was growing up in Bowral on the other side of the world. When you think about it, Bradman hitting a golf ball with a cricket stump was making the same type of cricket match for himself as Hobbs was doing on the other side of the world.

Hobbs was more or less brought up on the principle laid down by the first great batsman, WG Grace, which was to get the left leg forward to the length of the ball and the right foot right back to the short ball. That's how Hobbs played, from Grace's way of playing and by watching his elders. He made his first-class debut for Surrey in 1905 and scored 197 hundreds.

He is known to have been the best player anybody has ever seen. Now how do I know this? I never saw him play, but I've read so much about him by the doyen writers of the day, who wrote about the way Hobbs played and what he did, and the batsmen of that era who talked about him.

Hobbs had never played on matting wickets when he went to South Africa for the first time to play. The ball turned alarmingly on matting pitches there, but in five Test matches in 1909-10, he worked it out and scored 539 runs at an average of 67. The key is not the 67. It's that it's double the average of the next four run-makers for England - George Thompson, Frank Woolley, Lucky Denton and Wilfred Rhodes. They averaged 33, 32, 26 and 25.

He more than doubled their averages, which showed how good he was compared to everybody else, which is how we rate Bradman. We look at how many players average 50 in Test cricket and they are the iconic greats of our era. Yet Bradman averaged twice as much.

Hobbs' nickname was "The Master", because he played on all types of pitches. He had a great opening partnership with Herbert Sutcliffe of Yorkshire. They were fantastic players on sticky pitches, when it rained overnight and the ball jumped. At The Oval in 1926. In Melbourne two years later, they just played out of this world.

Hobbs was just an outstanding player. Wilfred Rhodes, the great allrounder of the time for Yorkshire and England, said, "He was the greatest batsman of my time. I learnt a lot from him when we went in first together for England. He had a cricket brain, and the position of his feet as he met the ball was perfect. He could have scored thousands more runs, but often he was content to throw his wicket away when he had reached his hundred and give someone else a chance."

Sutcliffe, who formed the greatest opening partnership ever for England with Hobbs, said: "I was his partner on many occasions on extremely bad wickets and I can say this without any doubt that he was the most brilliant exponent of all time and quite the best batsman of my generation on all types of pitches. On good wickets, I do believe that pride of place be given to Sir Donald Bradman."

Jack Fingleton played with Bradman and became a great writer. He wrote, "Although figures indicate the greatness of Hobbs, they don't convey the grandeur of his batting, his faultless technique and the manner in which he could captivate those who could recognise and analyse style. Australians who played against him believe cricket never produced a more correct batsman but it is well to note Hobbs' claim that he never had an hour's coaching in his life. He was a self-taught cricketer, observing, thinking, and executing for himself." Very interesting, that.

And the great doyen writer of the time, Neville Cardus, wrote: "Immediately the bowler begins his run, Hobbs seems to have some instinct of what manner of ball is on the way. Rarely does he move his feet to an incorrect position. His footwork is so quick that even from behind the nets it is not always possible to follow its movement in detail."

Mouth-watering stuff, eh? What a player he must have been.

The Jury's Out: Who's the next-best batsman after Bradman? | Cricinfo Magazine | ESPN Cricinfo
So there you have it, some of Bradman's contemporaries thought that Headley/Hobbs were better overall batsman because of their skill on sticky wickets.
 
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