How successful would 'The Don' be if he was playing in the current era?

[C_C]

Clearly, averaging in the 50's for the series in question is struggling very badly.

Well for one, Larwood and Voce were not a patch on Trueman and Statham, the WI four prong, Imran-Wasim-Waqar, Donald and Pollock, Ambrose and Walsh etc etc....
nowhere close for the matter of fact.
Bradman would've found a way to average 50+ against all these vaunted pace attacks but that would mean a 99 career average is definately out of the cards, considering that OZ have played WI a lot in the last 30 years and if you average 50+ in over 50% of your matches ( WI + PAK + RSA) and just 10-15 matches against the like of Zimbok/BD, you wouldnt be anywhere near a 99 average....
more like 60-70, which is what i've pegged him for.

 

[Tom Halsey]

Larwood et al were very good with their balls aimed at the head. Then having 7 fielders on the legside is crazy, even if today he recieved a barrage of bumpers he woudln't have to face that, meaning he would average higher.

 

[marc71178]

Clearly, averaging in the 50's for the series in question is struggling very badly.

It all depends on what his average would be now, seeing as it's half his career average.

So if he were to average, eg, 60 - that would be averaging in the 30s

 

[C_C]

Larwood et al were very good with their balls aimed at the head. Then having 7 fielders on the legside is crazy, even if today he recieved a barrage of bumpers he woudln't have to face that, meaning he would average higher.

Larwood might've been good for sir Don's era but he was not a patch on Andy ROberts, Michael Holding,Malcolm Marshall,Joel Garner, Courtney Walsh,Curtley Ambrose, Imran Khan,Waqar Younis,Wasim Akram,Allan Donald etc.......
i would pick to face Bill Voce and Larwood with a leg theory trap ANY DAY OF THE WEEK over facing the WI four prong with their throat balls, bouncers and beamers....
One of the few times WI employed a true leg-theory bowling attack was in Sabina Park late 70s vs IND...Michael Holding run amock and pulverised the Indians to a pulp.
There is absolutely no questioning that in fast bowling terms, the WI four prong ranks as the most hostile and hardest attack ever....

My great Uncle was a cricket aficionado and he saw Larwood when he was a 17 year old ( the europeans vs Hindus and Europeans vs Parsees games) and lived to see the 99 world cup.

According to him, Larwood was no faster than Sarfraz Nawaz/Hadlee/Danny Morrison etc.
which would mean mid-high 80s at best....... thats not in the low-high 90s category of the bowlers i mentioned......

I've read numerous wisden almanacs and i find him highly overrated.......comments such as 'highest ever speeds recorded' , '100 mph bowler' were totally ridiculous, as they had no equipment back them to accurately(Even remotely accurately) measure the bowling speeds.

From most cricket aficionados(older generation) i've come across, Larwood was mostly a fast-medium bowler who would be the third seamer in the aussie attack today or the 3rd/4th seamer in the PAK/RSA attack in the 90s.....
and he wouldnt get in the WI team of the late 70s to early 90s.

 

[nzidol]

Larwood might've been good for sir Don's era but he was not a patch on Andy ROberts, Michael Holding,Malcolm Marshall,Joel Garner, Courtney Walsh,Curtley Ambrose, Imran Khan,Waqar Younis,Wasim Akram,Allan Donald etc.......
i would pick to face Bill Voce and Larwood with a leg theory trap ANY DAY OF THE WEEK over facing the WI four prong with their throat balls, bouncers and beamers....
One of the few times WI employed a true leg-theory bowling attack was in Sabina Park late 70s vs IND...Michael Holding run amock and pulverised the Indians to a pulp.
There is absolutely no questioning that in fast bowling terms, the WI four prong ranks as the most hostile and hardest attack ever....

My great Uncle was a cricket aficionado and he saw Larwood when he was a 17 year old ( the europeans vs Hindus and Europeans vs Parsees games) and lived to see the 99 world cup.

According to him, Larwood was no faster than Sarfraz Nawaz/Hadlee/Danny Morrison etc.
which would mean mid-high 80s at best....... thats not in the low-high 90s category of the bowlers i mentioned......

I've read numerous wisden almanacs and i find him highly overrated.......comments such as 'highest ever speeds recorded' , '100 mph bowler' were totally ridiculous, as they had no equipment back them to accurately(Even remotely accurately) measure the bowling speeds.

From most cricket aficionados(older generation) i've come across, Larwood was mostly a fast-medium bowler who would be the third seamer in the aussie attack today or the 3rd/4th seamer in the PAK/RSA attack in the 90s.....
and he wouldnt get in the WI team of the late 70s to early 90s.

Harold Larwood is one of the great fast bowlers.

He used to inspire fear in opposition batsman due to his PACE, he was not the same pace as Sarfaz Narwaz as stated earlier in this thread, that is the silliest thing I have ever heard. The memories of an old man with no profile are hardly likely to go against the opinions of the games greats who considered this man a great bowler.

What cricket officianados call him a medium fast bowler? All reports I have of him are that of a genuine speedster. He would walk into any bowling lineup in the world today.

 

[C_C]

Look...
i am going by the observations of someone who actually SAW harold Larwood bowl and not going by Wisden's obvious bogus hype ( 100mph bowler ? puh-lease. how on earth did they come to that number ?!)

he was no more than a right arm medium fast bowler and is over-glorified because of his exploits in bodyline series- a totally new concept that batsmen had no clue about.
Like i said, i would rather face Larwood and Voce than the four prong of Marshall-Holding-Garner-Roberts.

I dont use the term great lightly.
Great is a term i reserve for the top 20-25 bowlers in history of cricket.....and Larwood is not in that hallowed echelon.
A 28+ average with less than 4 wicket/match is nothing to brag about IMO.
And incase anyone jumps the gun, no, i dont consider Jeff Thompson or Kapil Dev to be great bowlers either.

In today's players, i would rate Larwood about as good as Brett Lee or so...

 

[Richard]

The fact is there is no way of telling how quick Larwood or anyone else was. Until 1998 there was no reliable way of timing bowlers.
To say anything with regards the standard of bowling - purely the bowlers - is simple folly.
Not to mention that many pitches in those days made bowlers who may (or may not) have been ordinary today into deadly weapons.

 

[Richard]

Richard- i dont see any validity in the claim that Bradman batting at 12 venues faced more varied conditions than someone like Viv, Gavaskar, Border, Lara,Tendulkar etc.........You'll be hardpressed to prove that. I've read Neville Cardus and CLR James's stuff...all rate bradman very highly but he did enjoy some previlidged conditions.

I'll not be hardpressed at all - you should try it sometime.
Have a look at some pitches in the 20s, 30s and 40s - to get two the same was almost impossible. You don't even have to read Cardus and CLR (or even the great EWS) to know that.
Nowadays you can go to a ground in 2000 and then again in 2004 and bet on getting a pretty similar pitch.

Oh and another thing Richard- while Bradman played on sticky wickets, his record wasnt very impressive on that....and in Bradman's days, getting out Lbw was a heck of a lot harder than today...as today the ball can pitch outside offstump for you to be lbw but back then the ball had to pitch in line with both off stump and middle stump...so he gained a few advantaged and had a few disadvantages......playing rules and conditions wise, it evens out.

Where did you read that Bradman's record on stickies wasn't very impressive? Maybe you mistook it for the comment that he never played an innings that was perceived to have a massive influence on the match on a sticky? The same generalised nonsense that Tendulkar has to put-up with - "he is not a match-winner".
The lbw law, meanwhile, doesn't come close to evening it out. So you couldn't be lbw quite so easily - wow, you had a much, much, much higher chance of being bowled or caught than you do now; the decrease is massively higher than the increase in chance of being lbw.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Trust me, Larwood was seriously quick.

David Frith in his wonderful book "Bodyline Autopsy" quotes him at being timed at over 100mph by scientists at the White City greyhound track in 1929. While in an interview in 1975, George Hele one of the 32/33 series umpires said "I'm not exaggerating when I say it was 97mph". Presumably in 75 Hele would have seen Tommo for some sort of comparison.

As a side note, after having watched "The Story of The Ashes" DVD recently I was horrified to see what looked like a distinct kink in Larwood's delivery arm. No one ever, to my knowledge, has accused him of being a chucker, but the action looked iffy.

 

[Richard]

Any action will look odd if you look at it from the wrong angle or with the wrong slant.
Larwood was very probably like most of the rest - ie he broke the rules that were idealistic and unrealistic, but didn't actually do so more than anyone else.
As for being timed at 100mph, that's speculative, just as it was when Thomson was timed there.
He was, however, amongst the fastest bowlers around in his day and there's no real reason to assume that people must be bowling quicker today than they were back then - except most-recent-is-most-favourably-looked-on-syndrome, of course...

 

[BoyBrumby]

Any action will look odd if you look at it from the wrong angle or with the wrong slant.
Larwood was very probably like most of the rest - ie he broke the rules that were idealistic and unrealistic, but didn't actually do so more than anyone else.
As for being timed at 100mph, that's speculative, just as it was when Thomson was timed there.
He was, however, amongst the fastest bowlers around in his day and there's no real reason to assume that people must be bowling quicker today than they were back then - except most-recent-is-most-favourably-looked-on-syndrome, of course...

I guess the technolgy used in the 20s was primitive by comparison with today's speed guns; but for someone to suggest, as C_C did, that Larwood was medium-fast, is simply ill-informed piffle.

 

[Richard]

Of course it is - but like I say, it's most likely just most-recent-is-most-favourably-looked-on-syndrome, which is notoriously difficult to cure...

 

[C_C]

I'll not be hardpressed at all - you should try it sometime.

i disagree.
I think pitch-making techniques are a lot more refined than back then.
As a result, we can control the nature of the pitch MUCH more and thus have much more variety of pitches.
bradman never faced the variety of pitches the modern day players do.
Its either the seamer-friendly conditions , slightly spinner friendly conditions or batsmen's paradise.
He didnt bat in the dustbowls of IND or the bedrock pitches of South Africa.
He didnt bat on the abrasive pitches of PAK.
I believe today the players play under far more varied conditions than ever before.

To say anything with regards the standard of bowling - purely the bowlers - is simple folly.
Not to mention that many pitches in those days made bowlers who may (or may not) have been ordinary today into deadly weapons.

the standard of bowling is a critical guage.
Just like today, the standard of bowling is far lower than in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

Where did you read that Bradman's record on stickies wasn't very impressive? Maybe you mistook it for the comment that he never played an innings that was perceived to have a massive influence on the match on a sticky? The same generalised nonsense that Tendulkar has to put-up with - "he is not a match-winner".

Neville Cardus wrote that after watching Bradman.He was uncomforable on sticky wickets and i think he averaged 14.4 on sticky wickets.
According to Cardus and CLR James, the master of sticky wicket was George Headley, who averaged 40+ on those conditions.

The lbw law, meanwhile, doesn't come close to evening it out. So you couldn't be lbw quite so easily - wow, you had a much, much, much higher chance of being bowled or caught than you do now; the decrease is massively higher than the increase in chance of being lbw.

I fail to see why they had a much much higher chance of getting bowled...they had precisely the same chance of getting bowled today, as the size of the stumps have remained constant.

Like i said, professionalism in that era was missing. You didnt have players throw themselves around at the boundary to make a sliding stop and give up 3 runs instead of a 4. It was once you cleared the infield, it was pretty much a four.

David Frith in his wonderful book "Bodyline Autopsy" quotes him at being timed at over 100mph by scientists at the White City greyhound track in 1929. While in an interview in 1975, George Hele one of the 32/33 series umpires said "I'm not exaggerating when I say it was 97mph". Presumably in 75 Hele would have seen Tommo for some sort of comparison.

THat is absolutely rubbish.
There was no accurate technology in those days to measure a bowler's bowling speeds.
Not even remotely accurate. Even the speed guns used in Packer cricket, that measured THommo, Holding and Imran at high 90s mph was inaccurate by modern day standards.

I fail to see how someone can accurately claim by seeing if Larwood was 97mph or not.... i can see them comparing to speeds with a particular bowler ( you can say that McGrath bowls around the same speeds as Kapil Dev/Richard Hadlee) but i fail to see how can they pick an absolute number.

As for being timed at 100mph, that's speculative, just as it was when Thomson was timed there.
He was, however, amongst the fastest bowlers around in his day and there's no real reason to assume that people must be bowling quicker today than they were back then - except most-recent-is-most-favourably-looked-on-syndrome, of course...

simply because the fastest bowler today does not necessarily mean he is as fast as fastest bowlers in every era.

Take mid 90s for example.... the fastest bowler around that time was Waqar Younis/Wasim Akram/Allan Donald and they were clocked at 93-94 mph
Today that would rank as the seventh fastest, after Akhtar, Lee, Sami,Bond, Edwards and Harmison.

In the mid-70s to mid 80s, there was Lillee, THommo, Holding, Imran Khan, Garth LeRoux, Roberts, Croft and Marshall who were in the extreme speed category. Today their equivalent in terms of speed are only Akhtar,Sami,

Fastest in one's era doesnt necessarily mean you are a 95mph bowler.
And FYI, there was no 95mph bowler in the 60s either...

If you take less than 4 wicket/match and 28+ average in an unprofessional 'tea party cricket' era, you are gonna struggle to match Brett Lee in today's cricket.

 

[C_C]

Neville Cardus wrote that Larwood was not that Fast.
George Headley said later on that Wes Hall ( who wasnt super fast, bowled in the low 90mph category) was a yard faster than Larwood.

Vijay Merchant said that Larwood was slower than Mohammed Nissar and that Mohammed Nissar wasnt even the top 5 fastest bowler produced by the subcontinent ( he personally said that Imran Khan was faster)

Like i said, Larwood's speed was a lotta hot air. he was fast, probably one of the fastest in his era but not outrageously fast.
And if bouncers-n-beamers by Larwood and Voce would cause bradman to average 54+, he aint averaging more than that against Donald-Pollock-deVillers, Wasim-Waqar-Imran,Walsh-Ambrose-Bishop or Roberts-Holding-Garner-Marshall-Croft.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Ok, so I've given scientific evidence (albeit primitive, but the best there was at the time), the account of a contemporary & the evidence of my own eyes. I fail to see what more I can do.

For the record, I don't think Larwood is up there with the very best. He's a very good bowler who was great in one particular series. Doesn't alter the fact he was seriously quick tho.

 

[Pratters]

Schumachers, Sampras, Tiger Woods etc dont clash with what i said....
What i said is in a LOT of sports, you see a champion player in the ebryonic stages of the sport.
That is because while the rest of the crew is still in a modest position skills-wise ( when compared with players 50-60 years later), a few manage to get to a far higher professional level.
Its akin to a very professional minded state level player playing in a school match....he will be unstoppable. I think he is the best ever batsman but his 99+ average is slightly bloated.

Then how did these men dominate their sport?

Regarding Larwood not being as fast enough. Do you imply Bradman would not have been able to play good fast bowling of the current era? There was NO proetection in that era dude. The amount of bravado and guts required for any cricketer was much more compared to today. Gamesmanship didnt exist then but cricket wasnt easy even back then.

You are just adamant he would surely average below 100 which you cannot prove in any way.

 

[C_C]

Ok, so I've given scientific evidence (albeit primitive, but the best there was at the time), the account of a contemporary & the evidence of my own eyes. I fail to see what more I can do.

For the record, I don't think Larwood is up there with the very best. He's a very good bowler who was great in one particular series. Doesn't alter the fact he was seriously quick tho.

Evidence of your own eyes ?
You saw Larwood bowl in person ?
And if you are taking cricketing clips, yea i've seen them too and he doesnt appear faster than Sharfraz Nawaz/Winston Davis/Gillespie (of the last few years) etc etc...

And that scientific evidence is irrelevant. Trust me, i know. I am an engineer and i know what kinda technology was available to 'capture' speeds of a travelling body without internal rigging ( ie, spedometer in a car which is internally rigged to a car). The kind of tech you had back there, three balls of similar velocity would give readings of 90mph,99mph, 85mph.

I just dont think Larwood was seriously quick. thats all He was pretty quick but not in the top echelon for speed.

And didnt he tone it down for the 4th and 5th match, after the aussies threw a hissy fit and threatened to break off the empire ?! ( golly- talk about overreacting).

 

[C_C]

Regarding Larwood not being as fast enough. Do you imply Bradman would not have been able to play good fast bowling of the current era? There was NO proetection in that era dude. The amount of bravado and guts required for any cricketer was much more compared to today. Gamesmanship didnt exist then but cricket wasnt easy even back then.

You are just adamant he would surely average below 100 which you cannot prove in any way.

if he couldnt dominate fastish bowling back then, he definately wouldnt be able to dominate the super-quick stuff today.
It is actually the opinion of MANY coaches that having protective gear and the bouncer limitation, whilst saved some broken bones and serious concussions, actually eroded the batsmen's technique against short pitched bowling.
Simply put, the players today dont NEED to play at a bouncer and they can duck underneath it. They have protective gear which doesnt make them too concerned about copping one in the chest or the abdomen.
Back then, you HAD to play at a bouncer else you would be birdwatching the whole day as 200 consecutive bouncers go past your head.
So suffice to say that Bradman did develop his skills to play short pitched bowling but was found wanting by his strtospheric standards.

Gamesmanships didnt exist back in those days but neither did the intensity.
Fielders didnt throw themselves around to deny a four... they didnt slide around to stop a certain boundary and restrict the batsmen to two or three..
once you pierced the infield, it was easy pickings back then.
The opposition didnt spend so much time trying to analyse the players like they did in the 70s onwards... Bradman did thats why he dominated so much.
But if he had the same level of intensity from the opposition, the gap would obviously be less.

The reason i think Bradman would've averaged significantly lower ( 65-70) is not because he was an overhyped batsman-i still consider him to be the best of the best...but because his opposition was nowhere as professional and competitive as eh was.
In the modern era they are.
Its like Tendy batting for his school team today or batting in test cricket.
Tendy is still tendy and his abilities stay the same, but in the former case, his opposition is very poor and he will score tons at will...while in the latter case, his opposition is far superior thus closing the gap for him and making it much harder to dominate on the same level.


The men i mentioned dominated their sport because of lack of proper competition.
Its called professionalism.
Whenever some field is in a non-professional and embryonic stage, you have the bulk of the practitioners operating at a far lower level than when the field is in a cut-throat professional and advanced stage.
As a result, the ones who achieve maximum professional orientation enjoy a far bigger advantage in the embryonic stage than in an advanced stage.

A similar argument would be that if people of Pascal/Ampere/Boyle etc. were scientists today, their names wouldnt be known even remotely as widely.
Why ? because while they were good scientists, they were not THAT good but the field was pretty uneven and weak, so they got prominence.
Contrast that to today where there are millions of scientists making discoveries of equal or bigger importance..how many names do you know today ? Do you know the name of the inventor of the microchip off the top of your head ? do you know the name of the inventor of the first 'sensetive artificial hand ( ie, can feel sensation like human hands) off the top of your head' ?
No...why ? because today the field is very much even and there isnt much that seperate the top scientist from the 1000th ranked one(if there was a ranking)....
back in those days, you have 4-5 in stratospheric levels, 4-5 who are excellent and the rest were still scatching their head over grade 10-12 problems.
A far more competitive and developed field means that the competition is far closer. Thus its harder for you to 'stand out'.

 

[BoyBrumby]

Evidence of your own eyes ?
You saw Larwood bowl in person ?
And if you are taking cricketing clips, yea i've seen them too and he doesnt appear faster than Sharfraz Nawaz/Winston Davis/Gillespie (of the last few years) etc etc...

And that scientific evidence is irrelevant. Trust me, i know. I am an engineer and i know what kinda technology was available to 'capture' speeds of a travelling body without internal rigging ( ie, spedometer in a car which is internally rigged to a car). The kind of tech you had back there, three balls of similar velocity would give readings of 90mph,99mph, 85mph.

I just dont think Larwood was seriously quick. thats all He was pretty quick but not in the top echelon for speed.

And didnt he tone it down for the 4th and 5th match, after the aussies threw a hissy fit and threatened to break off the empire ?! ( golly- talk about overreacting).

No, of course I'm referring to the clips I've seen. Bodyline finished over 40 years before even I was born. But it's apparent that he's fast from them. Guys like Brdaman & McCabe scarely have time to react.

&, funnily enough, he was quantifiably faster than Dizzy. Frith quotes him as his example. During the Ashes of 2001 batters had, on average .54 seconds to react to Dizzy. In 32/33 they had .48 seconds to react to Lol. I know speed guns measure the speed from the hand nowadays, but ultimately the time taken to reach the batter is the crucial thing.

& Larwood toned it down in the 5th test, in as much as he broke his foot. DRJ made him stay on the pitch until Bradman was out tho.

 

[C_C]

In 32/33 they had .48 seconds to react to Lol. I know speed guns measure the speed from the hand nowadays, but ultimately the time taken to reach the batter is the crucial thing.

and how accurate was those timing measurements ?
Like i said, guaging the speed of a ball or the reaction times of a batsman back then was highly inaccurate, for there was no proper technology to accurate meausre the speed or the timing points ( inorder to measure reaction time).

Its a whole different technology to measure the speed by a speed gun (in essence they are radar detecors and radar detectors were far inferor and quirky back then) than say measuring the speed of a car ( just measure the revs/sec of a wheel with a simple refrence point on the rim and do an elementary math calculation) or that of a 100 metre runner ( measure time from when gun is fired to tape is broken).