Vijay.Sharma
School Boy/Girl Captain
Eliciting some thoughts from some of our senior citizens here on this piuece which I shared on rsc some time ago...
In any case how many innings would a batsman have played on wet wickets those days. The way people refer to wet wickets it gives the impression they would've played at least 50% of their innings on sticky dogs. From a quick look at Headley's stats he played around 10% of his innings on wet wickets and he played a lot on the English county circuit. Is that a fair proportion to consider or is it too many or too less?This came truly as a surprise...I was watching the Legends of Cricket video on cricinfo about George Headley. At one point in the video some of the interviewees spoke about Bradman's inability to play on wet wickets. I googled for more info and read an article containing this passage..
/--The performance of both batsmen on wet wickets is well worth noting. Ray Robinson compares Headley's scores on wet wickets in 13 innings between 1933 and 1939 to Bradman's scores in 15 innings under similar conditions for the same period. Bradman's average was 16.66, Headley's 39.85! Hence the observation by Neville Cardus, "that Headley has good claims to be considered on all wickets the finest of the inter-war batsmen."--/.
It seems that while Headley had 7 scores of 50+ in 13 innings, Bradman had just 1 from 15 innings on sticky dogs. I also came across this peace at
Bradman Scrapbooks, vol. 31, p. 15 since its an image I cannot copy-paste the text. But here, Cardus seems to have come down pretty heavily on Bradman's inability to play on wet wickets. Whatdya guys think...is Cardus' assessment fair or was it more of a Pom finding something against an Aussie?