IF BRADMAN PLAYED IN
TODAY'S ERA?

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CRAIG LOCATION: AUSTRALIA (JOINED CRICKETWEB.NET: MAY 2003) 07-05-2008, 05:15 PM

How do you think he would go? Of course there is a lot more cricket being played (more Tests, ODIs, T20), a lot of technology involved and a lot more scrutiny with every innings and it would of been awesome to see how he would have gone in India and had he the chance to play Zimbabwe and Bangladesh then BCL's [Brian Lara's] record of 400 might have been under threat and arguably better bowlers.

So would he have been just a run scoring genius back in the 30's and 40's or was he really over-rated because he never got to play cricket in more different conditions and was up against mainly the same type of bowlers.

And before I press "submit" and somebody wants to be a ****, I know he would be 100 this year and not alive, so if he was born in the mid to late 70's and was just as much of an active player as Jacques Kallis.

HOWARDJ BRISBANE (NOV 2003) 07-05-2008, 05:32 PM

FFS You need to compare a man to his contemporaries. If it was so easy back then, why wasn't everyone averaging 99 or even 80 or even 70 or just 60 even?

WELDONE KOLKATA --> MUMBAI, INDIA (JAN 2008) 07-05-2008, 05:38 PM

A complex point put simply in very few words.true.

INDIPPER GERMANY (JUL 2007) 07-05-2008, 05:41 PM

Narf, cause they were as good as Swiss village cricketers. It's obvious when you think about it.

GOUGHY ENGLAND (MAR 2006) 07-05-2008, 05:43 PM

Bradman was supposedly weakest in 2 areas. a) Intimidating bowling and b) Playing on bad wickets and stickys

Now with modern protective equipment and covered wickets his 2 main areas for criticisms no longer exist and are now irrelevant.

Add in new bat technology and his style of playing most balls and he would be near unstoppable.

CRAIG AUSTRALIA (MAY 2003) 07-05-2008, 05:48 PM

Didn't George Headley average over 60?

BAGAPATH INDIA (JUN 2006) 07-05-2008, 05:54 PM

when sachin asked bradman how he would have fared against the fearsome west indian fast bowlers the don had said may be he would have averaged about 70. tendulkar asked in surprise if bradman considered them to be so good that they could bring down his average by 30 points. don bradman asked "what do you think? I would have been 75 years old when they were playing. I dont fancy myself averaging more than 70 at that age"
when sehwag, hayden, sangakkara and pietersen average over 50, bradman would average over 100.

TOP_CAT ADELAIDE (FEB 2002) 07-05-2008, 05:56 PM

No way of knowing for sure or even close. Everyone's entitled to their opinions of course but to my mind they're, at best, educated guesses.

IKKI AUSTRALIA (SEP 2005) 07-05-2008, 06.11 PM

Yeah but 68 years old and still pluggin' away . I love the imagery of it.

BOND21 NEW YORK (SEP 2007) 07-05-2008, 06.20 PM

What about if Rod Laver was playing now? With a wooden racquet?

Who would win in a Bathurst race, a driver from 1900 or 2008??

WELDONE KOLKATA --> MUMBAI, INDIA (JAN 2008) 07-05-2008, 06.23 PM

Bradman played from 1928 to 1948. These are the stats of 10 other batsmen among those batting more than 20 innings in that period.The stats are only for these 20 years.They are furnished below in descending order of their average in the said period:

I want to make 2 points:
1. We'll get similar statistics for 10 batsmen batting more than 20 innings in the last 20 years. Morris' position will probably be taken by someone like Hussey and we'll get similar averages for the rest.
2. One can term batsmen like Headley, Hammond, Sutcliffe, Hutton, Morris, Ponsford, Nourse, Mitchell, Paynter or Compton to be 'of the class of Swiss Village Cricketers'; but it's not necessary for all to attach importance to that remark. Isn't it?

Bottomline: So it's highly debatable if batting was much easier those days, if at all easier.

BOND21 NEW YORK (SEP 2007) 07-05-2008, 06.31 PM

no, of course batting on sticky wickets that never got covered was much easier /sarcasm

RICHARD ENGLAND (OCT 2003) 07-05-2008, 07.55 PM

Originally Posted by bagapath - Pg 10

when sachin asked bradman how he would have fared against the fearsome west indian fast bowlers the don had said may be he would have averaged about 70. tendulkar asked in surprise if bradman considered them to be so good that they could bring down his average by 30 points. don bradman asked "what do you think? I would have been 75 years old when they were playing. I dont fancy myself averaging more than 70 at that age"

Sums it up for mine. I'd be a bit surprised if Bradman didn't average a bit less should he have played in the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s or '90s (including 2000), but probably not that much less. Maybe 90 or so. Pitches in the 1930s were notoriously flat, and the quality of bowling, with a few exceptions, not great. Still, however, there remained the possibility of stickies.

Since 2001/02, pitches have once again been that flat, without the chance of stickies this time, and bowling-attacks probably roundly even worse. I'd not be terribly surprised if he'd averaged 130 or so had he debuted against New Zealand in November 2001.

What made Bradman special was not an "attitude ahead of his time" as some seem to think, but a skill that no batsman - with the possible exception of WG Grace, but IMO we can't totally compare those two - has ever possessed before or since. David Boon once said (probably not an exact estimate, but you get the drift) that he reckoned bowlers got him out 1 out of 10 dismissals, and himself the other 9. Now of course, there are times when both come into play simultaneously (ie: getting yourself out would be hitting a nothing ball to mid-wicket; the bowler and yourself getting you out would be chasing a full away-swinger outside off and edging to slip; and the bowler getting you out would be a straight ball which had to be played, was attempted to be defended, that swung away onto the edge and was taken by the wicketkeeper). But what made Bradman special was that this happened with an enormously lesser ratio than anyone else. Where most batsmen played a bad shot, say, every 30 balls on average, Bradman played one maybe every 130. But a realistically unplayable legcutter to him was no different to one to any other batsman.

I'm not sure if anyone has given an estimate of how far Bradman's average is dragged down by stickies - if so, I'd reckon that'd be about what he'd average post-2001/02.

PASAG AUSTRALIA (MAR 2006) 07-05-2008, 08.00 PM

Originally Posted by Goughy - Pg 10

Bradman was supposedly weakest in 2 areas. a) Intimidating bowling and b) Playing on bad wickets and stickys. Now with modern protective equipment and covered wickets his 2 main areas for criticisms no longer exist and are now irrelevant. Add in new bat technology and his style of playing most balls and he would be near unstoppable.

Nice points, never thought of it like that before.

SMUDGE WELLINGTON, N.Z. (MAR...