Sir Donald Bradman

[Coronis]

Would love to have seen some modern players playing on stickies now. Bring back uncovered pitches.

 

[watson]

Hobbs's famous innings on sticky wickets include 57 out of 105 (Melbourne 1908), 122 out of 251 (Melbourne 1921), plus his 100 partnerships with Sutcliffe on difficult wickets at The Oval in 1926 and Melbourne in 1929.

Headley and Hammond both coped well with a sticky in the 1935 Barbados Test: Headley scored 44 out of 102; Hammond 43 out of 81-7 and 29* out of 75-6.

Herbert Sutcliffe penned the following so it's undoubtedly biased. However, it still reflects the prevailing opinion of the time that Bradman was not comfortable on sticky wickets or against short-pitched bowling.

Bradman was a product of Bradman's time, not the time of Victor Trumper, Greg Chappell or Allan Border.

HOBBS BETTER THAN BRADMAN

But Don's World's No. 1 Batsman To-day Despite Wet Wicket Failures

4 August 1936

Is Don Bradman the greatest batsman in the history of the game? Most Australians will answer 'Yes,' but Sutcliffe, while paying a fervent tribute to Don's superlative skill, declares that Hobbs, at his best, and on all wickets, was greater than the Australian. He considers that a sticky wicket reveals a weakness in Bradman's defence. He, however ranks him as world's No. 1 batsman to-day, and refers to one innings by him as the greatest since the war.

(By Herbert Sutcliffe.)

During my cricket career I have had the great pleasure of associating with scores of stars in the cricket world. Being a post-war cricketer in so far as first-class cricket is concerned I am unable to boast of having played against the famous W. G. Grace, who has been lauded by all old cricketers as the best ever. But I am really proud to have played with and against such world renowned players as Hirst, Rhodes, Tyldesley, J. T. Ranji, Fry, Spooner, and Sharpe — wonderful players all, whose deeds on the cricket field will live for ever.

It is not my intention to deal with the merits and performances of the players of past generations. With all due respect to the many great performances by the players of other days I am of the opinion they are only fully appreciated by those old cricket enthusiasts who actually saw their performances. The deeds of a sportsman like the deeds of a politician are quickly forgotten. It is undoubtedly the 'present' which counts.

New Times — New Idol.

Why! Hobb's miraculous performances are thought little of by the young schoolboy of today. He has probably read and heard of Hobbs having been the best batsman in the would for many years. He may have adopted Hobbs as his unseen hero just as I did as a youth, but it is the deeds of Bradman, Verity, Mitchell, Hammond, Grimmett, O'Reilly, and Larwood which interest the young enthusiast of today. It is always exceptionally difficult to compare cricketers of one generation with cricketers of another generation.

The Science of batting and bowling has changed considerably since the war, and whenever I hear those foolish old diehards express the opinion that present-day cricket is of a much lower standard than in their day, and that no current cricketer is to be compared with the old stars I turn away in disgust, for I realise how futile it is to compare players of different generations.

It will be gathered that Hobbs has been my 'ideal batsman' and although Hobbs is now unfortunately no longer playing I feel justified in mentioning his name before that of any other. It is but two years since the Surrey idol ceased taking part in first-class cricket, and even at the age of 54 I would say that if he were given the chance of playing in another dozen games in an effort to complete 200 centuries. It would be a fine gesture on the part of the Surrey Club — a gesture which would be hailed with delight by cricket enthusiasts throughout the Empire, and particularly by the Surrey supporters. Hobbs has been responsible, in a large degree, for filling the coffers of the Surrey Club for many years, and a dozen further appearances would ensure a profit for 1936.

Classical Hobbs.

Why do I think Hobbs at his best superior to Bradman? It is a question, easy to answer. He has proved himself times without number the complete master batsman on every type of wicket, and against every type of bowling — particularly on 'glue pots' and against fast bowling.

He has also proved since his very early days that he has always enjoyed the ideal temperament so necessary for outstanding success. It might be argued that Hobbs took exception to the short bowling of McDonald in 1930, and did not relish bouncers of big Bill Bowes in 1932, both in the Champion County v Rest games, but as Hobbs declared during the former 'spot of bother' - "you know, at the age of 48 I am unable to spot the fast short 'uns quick enough to permit the placing of the feet in the right position for the correct execution of the pull or hook stroke."

Hobbs certainly would not have minded that type of bowling a few years earlier. I can see the picture of Hobbs now — facing those two demon bowlers, Gregory and MacDonald. A most graceful and comfortable stance, displaying the utmost confidence and determination to succeed, radiating exactness of his 'calling' for runs, and above all, his glorious batsmanship, a perfect stroke for every ball, each a technical masterpiece, every part of his body working in perfect unison, the whole controlled by a perfect cricket brain. A great player on a 'sticky day' and an equally great player on any wicket. Hobbs is undoubtedly the best batsman I have ever seen.

BRADMAN A CLASS TO HIMSELF.

Of the batsmen playing first-class cricket today, Bradman must surely be hailed as No. 1. His phenomenal performances during the last few seasons place him in a class to himself. Bradman is undoubtdely the outstanding figure in outside sport, a truly scientific wonder. I have witnessed three innings of Don which must be placed by that player as his three best. I refer to his 334 in the third Test at Leeds in 1930, his 304 in the fourth Test at Leeds in 1934, and a festival century at Scarborough. His relentless aggressive, and scintillating form in both Tests at Leeds amazed everyone who attended the game.

His ruthless treatment of all bowlers, his lightning-like footwork and his magnificent strokeplay — strokes which are Bradman's alone — was a sheer delight to watch.

As brilliant as those two mammoth scores were, there was an even greater effort in the Scarborough game referred to earlier. Many who read this have heard of a very brilliant century scored by the 'd'Artagnan of the crease' — Charlie MacCartney— in the third Test at Headingley in 1926. Before Bradman arrived, I considered this performance the best ever on that type of wicket, but, although Bradman's two big scores were not quite so brilliant as MacCartney's quick 100, they were, nevertheless taken over such a long period, even greater innings. But Bradman's super-century at the Scarborough Festival in 1934 was a thrilling affair. From the first ball to the last he made a shot at practically every ball, and what a shot it was— prefect wrist-work and perfect timing saw ball after ball travel as fast as a cannon ball to thud with terrific force against the boundary pickets.

'Sticky' Failures.

The rapturous applause and enthusiasm accorded Bradman, both during his knock and on his return to the pavilion was ample testimony to a hreat innings which is talked of today as the best innings played since the war, and I will go so far as to say that no pre-war cricketer could have produced a finer effort. With all due respect to Don's greatness on a perfect wicket and against ordinary good length bowling of all types, I must confess that he, like the majority of the leading batsmen of the day, does not extactly relish a fast rising ball. One would have expected the famous Don, with his ultra quick eye and footwork, would have had much more time than any other batsman to place the short ball in safety and with profit.

The Australian batsmen so seldom play on a sticky wicket that it is only to be expected that they should fall below the standard attained by English batsmen. I have seen Bradman play on a bad wicket on four occasions. On each occasion he has failsd to score more than a dozen runs. I trust that on an occasion in the near future I shall be given the opportunity of seeing Don in action on a vile wicket for at least a couple of hours, so that I might be able to iudge his capabilities.

 

[stephen]

Very interesting read.

 

[Starfighter]

Perhaps Bradman failed on wet wickets because he was attempting score using the bat rather than padding it away over after over until conditions improved like Sutcliffe did.*




*Intended more as a jab at Sutcliffe than anything else

 

[Victor Ian]

I find it disingenuous to bring the glue pot into a discussion of gret players as if it is somehow a required characteristic. First and foremost, you can not pick a player to play on a gluepot - that is a happening by chance. If this was how you picked players, I'd pick Bradman every time and win all the matches except those anomalies where the glue pot appears. Secondly, players are lauded as champions on glue pots based on only a few innings. This really is selective memory based upon a statistically far insignificant number of games.

But let all those people use this as yet another way to discredit the Don.

As for the 'he was uncomfortable facing short pitched bowling', argument, I don't know where to place this. Aren't all players uncomfortable? He surely was not uncomfortable enough for people to actually use this as a tactic against him and reduce his mind boggling average. Or perhaps they did and 99.94 is the mark of his uncomfortableness. If Bradman was uncomfortable against short pitched bowling then all opposition were sheer idiots for not using it to quell his output. This seems like yet another [cough] 'bull****' put down.

 

[Midwinter]

bradman didn't like playing on sticky wickets, probably because in an Australian summer they were unusual. He certainly would not have had much experience with them while he was growing up.

Then again not many batsmen are successful on sticky wickets.

 

[Red]

Things like this just crack me up. Think about Bradman for a moment, and imagine how good he must have been.

A whole tactic was invented in order to curb his influence one series. It is debatable how sportsmanlike it was, but the English were so intimidated by his ability they had to devise debatable tactics. The tactic did, however, curb his influence for that series.

He averaged 56 in this series trying to cope with these questionable tactics, and trying to score runs. As we all know, he averaged 99 over his entire career.

To give those numbers some context, consider the fact that Hammond, Sobers, Sangakkara, Hutton, Hobbs and G.Chappell all average somewhere close to 56 over their entire careers. And all might be considered the second best batsman of all time. Consider that Lara, Richards, Tendulkar and Ponting all average quite a bit less over their entire careers than 56, which is what Bradman averaged in his struggle series. Consider that in the Bodyline series, Bradman still led Australia's batting averages by a significant margin.

Then, when you've considered all this, stop talking rot about whether or not he is better than modern players or whether or not whatever or whenever or however. He was so much better than everyone else it's not even funny.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

bradman didn't like playing on sticky wickets, probably because in an Australian summer they were unusual. He certainly would not have had much experience with them while he was growing up.

Then again not many batsmen are successful on sticky wickets.

It's also true by all accounts that there was a vast difference between an English sticky and an Australian one. A suitably skilled batsman could play on an English sticky but in Australia they could be literal impossible to bat on.

 

[AndrewB]

Ian Peebles wrote an article about how Bradman (and many other "hot-country players") struggled on a "slow rain-soaked wicket where the ball turns slowly, discouraging the forceful strike, but never doing anything vicious"; the type of wicket which English batsmen of the time (especially the Northerners) had plenty of experience of so knew how to cope with. (The article as a whole is reminiscent of Geoff Boycott's explanation of what the Australian batsmen were doing wrong when Stuart Broad took 8-15).

Peebles notes that Bradman chose not to try to adapt to such pitches, for fear of compromising his technique on the pitches he usually batted on, and concludes that Bradman was probably right.

 

[Howe_zat]

Things like this just crack me up. Think about Bradman for a moment, and imagine how good he must have been.

A whole tactic was invented in order to curb his influence one series. It is debatable how sportsmanlike it was, but the English were so intimidated by his ability they had to devise debatable tactics. The tactic did, however, curb his influence for that series.

He averaged 56 in this series trying to cope with these questionable tactics, and trying to score runs. As we all know, he averaged 99 over his entire career.

To give those numbers some context, consider the fact that Hammond, Sobers, Sangakkara, Hutton, Hobbs and G.Chappell all average somewhere close to 56 over their entire careers. And all might be considered the second best batsman of all time. Consider that Lara, Richards, Tendulkar and Ponting all average quite a bit less over their entire careers than 56, which is what Bradman averaged in his struggle series. Consider that in the Bodyline series, Bradman still led Australia's batting averages by a significant margin.

Then, when you've considered all this, stop talking rot about whether or not he is better than modern players or whether or not whatever or whenever or however. He was so much better than everyone else it's not even funny.

Nobody has said otherwise, stop stroking yourself off.

This thread started life as a discussion about Bradman and once again it's gone from anything that might have been interesting about him to a bunch of people agreeing with each other over and over again to defeat posters who aren't here.

 

[OverratedSanity]

I find the "bowlers were really slow back then" argument amusing. Grade bowlers can generally crank it up to 130 kph with no special training so what makes people think the top line bowlers from the past couldn't hit 145?

They could've hit 145 on occasion (mainly Larwood who does look pretty damn quick) but it's just not feasible that they would have done so as frequent a basis as modern bowlers. 145 kph spells in modern cricket are pretty rare as it is, I don't think anyone apart from Larwood would've touched those speeds. The overrates were just so high that it doesn't seem likely.

 

[honestbharani]

Ian Peebles wrote an article about how Bradman (and many other "hot-country players") struggled on a "slow rain-soaked wicket where the ball turns slowly, discouraging the forceful strike, but never doing anything vicious"; the type of wicket which English batsmen of the time (especially the Northerners) had plenty of experience of so knew how to cope with. (The article as a whole is reminiscent of Geoff Boycott's explanation of what the Australian batsmen were doing wrong when Stuart Broad took 8-15).

Peebles notes that Bradman chose not to try to adapt to such pitches, for fear of compromising his technique on the pitches he usually batted on, and concludes that Bradman was probably right.

A bit of an eye opener for some of our posters who seem to think a batsman should formulate his technique based on the odd tough batting wicket he "might" get instead of the regular wickets they do get to bat on. For all the **** that is thrown around at batsmen like Sehwag and Warner, its gotta be remembered that they have been huge match winners for their side playing the way they have played and with the technique they have developed than any of the other "tough" wicket batsmen either country would have produced, esp. openers.

 

[stephen]

They could've hit 145 on occasion (mainly Larwood who does look pretty damn quick) but it's just not feasible that they would have done so as frequent a basis as modern bowlers. 145 kph spells in modern cricket are pretty rare as it is, I don't think anyone apart from Larwood would've touched those speeds. The overrates were just so high that it doesn't seem likely.

145 isn't particularly fast. 150+ is. Even Siddle used to hit 150+ on occasion but settled down to 130-135 later in his career.

Even if most bowlers were only bowling 130-135 on average, that's still enough to trouble top batsmen when the ball is in the right areas. In fact I've heard that 130-135 is the optimal speed for conventional swing - any faster and the ball doesn't tend to swing as much and any slower and it becomes too easy to pick up. The other thing to consider is that batsmen in Bradman's day were using bats that were awful and protective gear that might as well have been paper. If bowlers were on average 5kph slower, that was offset by the terrible bat technology.

 

[honestbharani]

Nah.. they did some comparisons on speed stats and tried to classify speed levels, with expert panels and all, and I think it went something like this (might have been Star or Channel 9, not sure):

150+ = express
140-150 = fast
130-140 = fast medium
120-130 = medium fast
<120 = medium

Of course, they were going by the average speeds removing the slower balls.

 

[OverratedSanity]

145 isn't particularly fast. 150+ is. Even Siddle used to hit 150+ on occasion but settled down to 130-135 later in his career.

Even if most bowlers were only bowling 130-135 on average, that's still enough to trouble top batsmen when the ball is in the right areas. In fact I've heard that 130-135 is the optimal speed for conventional swing - any faster and the ball doesn't tend to swing as much and any slower and it becomes too easy to pick up. The other thing to consider is that batsmen in Bradman's day were using bats that were awful and protective gear that might as well have been paper. If bowlers were on average 5kph slower, that was offset by the terrible bat technology.

I'm not saying it was easier to face. Anyone who's watched cricket for any length of time should know that speed doesn't always directly correlate to quality.

I just find it hard to believe any bowlers would have hit the 150+ speeds in those days. Even most of the available footage of Frank Tyson, who's cited as extremely quick, appears on video to be nowhere near as quick as what we've seen the likes of Shoaib and Thomson produce. I think there was some study which attempted to measure the speed of Larwood's deliveries and a few of them whlere measured at 97 mph iirc. I know old film can be misleading when it comes to speeds but you can even see it in Larwood's action and follow through... He looks quick but certainly not express by today's standards. In most of the footage he doesn't look like he's exerting himself fully and there's not much hyperextension/follow through as with Shoaib/Thomson/Holding, which makes me think he wouldn't have hit speeds of 150-160 which is generally in the upper limit of what the human body can achieve today.

Admittedly it's a very lazy analysis on my part (since judging a bowlers speed from just his actions and follow through isnt perfect tstl) but imo, just on the basis of watching some old film, even the likes of Lindwall and Trueman look a clear step faster than Larwood. Lindwall, especially has an action that has very similar characteristics to Shoaib and co. from the longish runup right down to the slight kink in the elbow during delivery.

 

[smash84]

Nah.. they did some comparisons on speed stats and tried to classify speed levels, with expert panels and all, and I think it went something like this (might have been Star or Channel 9, not sure):

150+ = express
140-150 = fast
130-140 = fast medium
120-130 = medium fast
<120 = medium

Of course, they were going by the average speeds removing the slower balls.

Medium fast is supposed to be faster than fast medium

 

[OverratedSanity]

Medium fast is supposed to be faster than fast medium

No

 

[smash84]

No

Why not? Isn't fast medium, a bowler on the higher side of the medium scale and medium fast a bowler on the lower end of the fast scale? And fast scale begins after the medium scale ends.

 

[OverratedSanity]

Why not? Isn't fast medium, a bowler on the higher side of the medium scale and medium fast a bowler on the lower end of the fast scale? And fast scale begins after the medium scale ends.

Huh. Interesting way too look at it I suppose.

But fast medium > medium fast is always how it's been. Cricket is just really dumb sometimes.

 

[Lillian Thomson]

Perfectly straight forward. Slightly slower than fast is obviously quicker than slighter faster than medium.