This is a long ‘thesis’ so please feel free to ignore. But is has been my overall thought on Bradman. I apologize in advance.
Ok, I`m going to start this with a simple statement and then explain how I personally came to this conclusion. Do I think that Bradman is twice as talented or good as Sobers, Viv, Tendulkar, Lara, Kallis, AB, Kohli… take your pick. The answer is no. Do I think that Bradman is the greatest batsmen of all time, yes.
The first thing that has to be looked at is the statistics, because it is the only unbiased numerically accurate method of comparing players. And Bradman is an outlier. A number of corrections on those statistics can be done by looking at eras and finding an avg by which you can normalize these statistics. Based on things from the bowling avgs at the time versus batting avgs versus number of balls bowled versus how long a test went on for etc, etc, etc. (I have not crunched the numbers myself but many people have and many on this website have linked to the different ways in which you can compare these numbers.) Each and every time Bradman comes out as a statistical anomaly of having far greater numbers than anybody else. Nothing changes that. Now normally when you look at a statistical data set of numbers you will disregard any number that falls outside the bounds of the numbers as potentially flawed or unreliable data.
Now why something would be considered unreliable is many fold. However, this could mean that the measurement was inaccurate. Not so in this case. It could also mean however that circumstances surrounding the measurement was not truly indicative of ‘real’ circumstances. Unfortunately, this is where the problem comes in as there is no way to see if this second part is true or not, except by anecdotal evidence given by himself and those at the time, and some extra thought on why his stats could be so far different to everybody else’s.
Firstly he was a consummate professional (even by the modern era standards) who worked on his game constantly and loved cricket and everything about it. He was not the first to do this but in the era that he played this was still not the norm when compared say to the modern era. This alone would have given him a far better advantage than most of his contemporaries.
Secondly, by all accounts, he was a brilliantly talented sportsman (something like AB) who was good at just about every eye hand co-ordinated sports there was at the time. Now this is important because of numbers, at the time Bradman played there was far less people playing cricket amongst fewer nations (today, apparently, there is an estimated 120 million cricket players) than there has been since. Just because of the nature of things there has been an increase in the number of cricketers over the years. As an example of why this is important let’s look at a player facing club cricketers in Kenya (sorry Kenya!) is not the same as in England or Australia. Because there is more people playing the game in Aus and Eng the overall quality has improved compared to the Kenyan club teams. Thus an avg of 90 in Kenya is not necessarily better than an avg of 55 in Australia. Even if the overall batting avg in both club levels is 40 runs. (This is ultimately the point of the video that started this discussion regarding Bradman and player avg of older eras to new eras). Thus an exceptionally talented sportsman is likely to stand out amongst his peers in a smaller group than a larger group who potentially have a number of these types of players. The problem once again however is that you play against a team of the 11 best players and that provides another statistical obstacle because even if the overall player base is small it does not mean you don`t have 11 excellent players, there is just a smaller chance of this being true.
These two reasons could account for his superior numbers in his era; i.e. that his natural talent was far more unique in his era and combined with his natural determination and professionalism made him spectacular. In the modern era both these reasons are no longer true. Sport is now more professional, and the number of player’s, teams and games played against top quality opposition is higher. But there is still players that stand out above the others, just not quite so far above.
None of this takes away from Bradman’s achievement’s he would almost certainly have been a standout player, but would he have been so far in front of the pack is debatable. Would he have been the best, based on current evidence in all likelihood he would have been but there is no certainty. I consider him the best because he did something nobody would have thought as possible and gave something to the following generations to strive for. Even if they are never likely to achieve this.
