What Sachin Tendulkar has that Don Bradman didn’t - Atherton

[Guest Gunner]

I think it was Ian Chappell who said those words to him.

I think it was the Don. The series was planned by the Don and sobers.

Thomo didn't play it the entire series. Bob Maisse and Garth McKenzie were the ones who shared the new ball with Lillee.

I wasn't talking about this particular series, I know thommo wasn't involved. I just mentioned that in a generic sense. There are interviews in which Sobers talks about it.

[Don Sharma]

I think it was the Don. The series was planned by the Don and sobers.

Yep, the series was organised by them after Don Bradman, chairman of ACB, ruled out any cricketing ties with SA until the team was chosen on a non-racial basis. But I wasn't aware of his comment...I stand corrected.

I wasn't talking about this particular series, I know thommo wasn't involved. I just mentioned that in a generic sense. There are interviews in which Sobers talks about it.

My bad...cheers!

[Guest Gunner]

Yep, the series was organised by them after Don Bradman, chairman of ACB, ruled out any cricketing ties with SA until the team was chosen on a non-racial basis. But I wasn't aware of his comment...I stand corrected. My bad...cheers!

No probs Machis. :hatsoff:

[riya]

Can't compare different eras.Even if u want to compare Don >>>>>>rest of the batsman of his era.Well I can't say that about Sachin,had he averaged in 60s,say like 65+, we can do that.

[Anakin]

Can't compare different eras.Even if u want to compare Don >>>>>>rest of the batsman of his era.Well I can't say that about Sachin' date='had he averaged in 60s,say like 65+, we can do that.[/quote'] Morphy or Kasparov? Professional sports with lots of pros is quite a different world.

[CSK Fan]

Can't compare different eras.Even if u want to compare Don >>>>>>rest of the batsman of his era.Well I can't say that about Sachin' date='had he averaged in 60s,say like 65+, we can do that.[/quote'] Problem is, in the 90s he did average close to 60s and was way ahead of other players of his era. He continued playing unlike the Don who couldnt and like anyone with a long career, had ups and downs.

[Sachinism]

Problem is' date=' in the 90s he did average close to 60s and was way ahead of other players of his era. He continued playing unlike the Don who couldnt and like anyone with a long career, had ups and downs.[/quote'] Yup he had a higher average than most in the 90's and then the turn of the millennium, we have all these tom. dicks and harrys with high averages

[fuub]

Problem is' date=' in the 90s he did average close to 60s and was way ahead of other players of his era. [b']He continued playing unlike the Don who couldnt and like anyone with a long career, had ups and downs.

What are you talking about? Bradmans average is from his first match in 1928 to his last in 1948, it is not like he retired just because of a quick run of good form.

[Guest Gunner]

What are you talking about? Bradmans average is from his first match in 1928 to his last in 1948' date=' it is not like he retired just because of a quick run of good form.[/quote'] He is talking about the number of test. The don lost a good part of his career due to WWII.

[Anakin]

Yup he had a higher average than most in the 90's and then the turn of the millennium' date=' we have all these tom. dicks and harrys with high averages[/quote']Is it the most or really all? IIRC, only SRT, SWaugh and BCL had 50+ avg during the 90s against much better bowlers and on better pitches and SRT had the best avg among them.

[riya]

Is it the most or really all? IIRC' date=' only SRT, SWaugh and BCL had 50+ avg during the 90s against much better bowlers and on better pitches and SRT had the best avg among them.[/quote'] I agreed.Still the difference between SRT and Waugh,Lara is not as huge as in the case of Bradman.

[goose]

If one can accept that the closeness of batting averages between Tendulkar and likes of Mohammed Yousuf and Thilan Samaraweera say nothing of the gulf in batsmanship, why blindly accept Bradman's average to be any more meaningful?

[goose]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/cricket/ check the headline quote - it's completely changed and as far as i can see is not even part of the article.

[Anakin]

I agreed.Still the difference between SRT and Waugh' date='Lara is not as huge as in the case of Bradman.[/quote'] Again, that's what happens in professional sport as opposed to amateurish ones. BTW, DGB himself said, they were amateurs at that time. I forgot which dvd, but I remember watching one in which he made that comment.

[Johnny1]

I did not say he is the greatest, and do not have the scope of knowledge/perspective on the game to make such a comment. I simply put him as an all time great. There are some players like Tendulkar, Warne, Sobers and Richards that you just need to watch once in their element to realize these are among the greatest players to grace the game. That comment I originally made to goose (a while back) was not in reference to comparisons with Bradman or others, but Tendulkar's standing on his own, despite various people who will try and pull him down using spurious comparisons such as this or stupid statistics. BTW, welcome to ICF. Agree very much with your previous post on Bradman v. his peers. Hope you stick around and keep contributing on these boards.

Hi, thanks for the welcome. Enjoy the intelligent discussions here, intend to stick around :) I haven't followed much of what has been said in the next few comments, not closely anyway, so pardon me if I am repeating what anyone else may have said. But I think there is little doubt that if anyone comes close to challenging Bradman as the greatest cricketer ever, it is Sobers, simply because of his all-round, multi-dimensional achievements. With regards to Bradman, it really is not so much about his average. It is also the situations his runs came in - on several occasions they have come when the rest of the team has not been doing well, when he has been the solo scorer. This comes to light if you check some of his biggest scores and where they have come in.

[CSK Fan]

With regards to Bradman, it really is not so much about his average. It is also the situations his runs came in - on several occasions they have come when the rest of the team has not been doing well, when he has been the solo scorer. This comes to light if you check some of his biggest scores and where they have come in.

You will find the same about Sachin

[King Tendulkar]

More anti india garbage from Atherton the pant batsman. Looks like he wrote to soon and made an **** of himself by posting this before play on day 3. As mighty India take wickets galore and are steaming to a great victory. Egg on face time Atherton. Now stop this anti India rubbish!!!!! ------------------------------------------------------- The Times November 26, 2009 Lifeless pitches are bringing slow death to Test cricket in India Mike Atherton, Specialist Correspondent of the Year There are some gluttons for punishment out there. In a recent poll, 7 per cent of India supporters said that Test cricket was their game of choice. Watching the tedious fare on offer between India and Sri Lanka this month, the surprise is not that there are so few, but that there are any at all. Frankly, root canal treatment would be more fun. They are at it again in Kanpur this week: hundreds on the first day for Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir as India plundered a mountain (233) for the first wicket and a molehill (137) for the second, Rahul Dravid using the conditions to keep Father Time at bay. Why even consider retiring with such heaven-sent batting conditions to gorge on? All this came on the back of a monstrously dull affair in Ahmedabad, where bowlers lay down to be slaughtered at the altar of batsmanship. Almost 1,600 runs were scored there for only 21 wickets taken and seven individual hundreds were notched while two of the top-ranked bowlers in the world, Harbhajan Singh and Muttiah Muralitharan, were rendered impotent by batsmen unwilling to spurn such an opportunity to feather their own statistics — and, more importantly, by an awful pitch. After the match the focus was on statistics — Sachin Tendulkar’s 43rd Test hundred, for example, during which he passed the small matter of 30,000 runs in international cricket. The usual press releases from the ICC had such a slant, too: with his sixth career double century, Mahela Jayawardena, it said, had overtaken his compatriot, Kumar Sangakkara, to take the No 1 spot in the world rankings. When the game offers no result — no chance of a result, more importantly — no fluctuating fortunes, no interest and no drama, what else but dry statistics is there to talk about? What the ICC’s press release should have said, of course, was that the umpires and the match referee had marked the Ahmedabad pitch down as unacceptably poor and that the groundsman’s penalty would be a period without international cricket. The ICC has recognised that the definition of a poor pitch has had to change. For decades, particularly during eras when the balance between bat and ball was more finely tuned, a poor pitch would be regarded as one that gave an undue advantage to the bowler. Something, perhaps, that started too green, too damp or too dry so that it crumbled too quickly. Indeed, it was the ECB that was forced to introduce guidelines to make pitches more batsmen-friendly after a few years in the late 1980s when counties took home advantage to extremes. But things have swung too far the other way. The balance between bat and ball — the principal thing that keeps cricket entertaining — has become horribly skewed, so that there is an urgent need to make bland pitches a thing of the past. The ICC recognised this recently — something that the MCC world cricket committee endorsed keenly — when it said that pitches that offered negligible bounce, carry, seam movement or turn should be marked poor. It was as if the Ahmedabad pitch was prepared as a deliberate test case. Enervating Test cricket is nothing new in India. In 1981-82 they played England in one of the dullest series of all time. India sat on their 1-0 lead, piled up huge scores on featherbed pitches and reduced over-rates to about ten an hour. England retaliated with occasionally fewer, and so with neither side attempting to win, the next five games petered out into blood-sapping draws. Phil Edmonds reckoned that the subsequent desertion of some players to South Africa was not so much because of the money but because they were “bored to the soul with Test cricket after that tour”. Amazingly, 394,000 people — a record at the time — watched the six-match series, although, presciently, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack warned the Indian board of the need to “put some ginger in their pitches before crowds start losing interest”. Crowds flocked to those bore draws because there were few alternatives, in life or sport. That is not the case now. India’s emergence as an economic superpower has transformed daily options in parts of the sub-continent and Test cricket has its own challenges from within. So there were great swaths of empty seats in Ahmedabad and Kanpur, as there are for Test cricket the world over, except in England, Australia and only occasionally elsewhere. Of course, you wouldn’t have to be such a cynic to wonder whether it is in Indian cricket’s interests to strangle whatever remaining relevance there is in the Test game. They now have more lucrative fish to fry. But it doesn’t matter whether it is Test or Twenty20 cricket, if bowlers continue to be treated as second-class citizens, interest will wane. The fall of a wicket is the most dramatic moment in cricket, something the game is all too quickly forgetting.

[Sachinism]

Wow Atherton has really got it in for India. He's making it sound like BCCI only have interest in making money and T20, which is partially true, but I doubt he'd be saying the same if England have come up with the IPL. I bet he wasn't saying anything when when England were ready to suck off Stanford.

[Sooda]

Well, its a valid point he is making. Dileep on Cricinfo and various posters here said the same thing. We dont like it coming from a angrez The Dravid statement was low though. even now N times the batter Athers was in his heydey

[King Tendulkar]

More anti india garbage from Atherton the pant batsman. Looks like he wrote to soon and made an **** of himself by posting this before play on day 3. As mighty India take wickets galore and are steaming to a great victory. Egg on face time Atherton. Now stop this anti India rubbish!!!!! ------------------------------------------------------- The Times November 26, 2009 Lifeless pitches are bringing slow death to Test cricket in India Mike Atherton, Specialist Correspondent of the Year There are some gluttons for punishment out there. In a recent poll, 7 per cent of India supporters said that Test cricket was their game of choice. Watching the tedious fare on offer between India and Sri Lanka this month, the surprise is not that there are so few, but that there are any at all. Frankly, root canal treatment would be more fun. They are at it again in Kanpur this week: hundreds on the first day for Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir as India plundered a mountain (233) for the first wicket and a molehill (137) for the second, Rahul Dravid using the conditions to keep Father Time at bay. Why even consider retiring with such heaven-sent batting conditions to gorge on? All this came on the back of a monstrously dull affair in Ahmedabad, where bowlers lay down to be slaughtered at the altar of batsmanship. Almost 1,600 runs were scored there for only 21 wickets taken and seven individual hundreds were notched while two of the top-ranked bowlers in the world, Harbhajan Singh and Muttiah Muralitharan, were rendered impotent by batsmen unwilling to spurn such an opportunity to feather their own statistics — and, more importantly, by an awful pitch. After the match the focus was on statistics — Sachin Tendulkar’s 43rd Test hundred, for example, during which he passed the small matter of 30,000 runs in international cricket. The usual press releases from the ICC had such a slant, too: with his sixth career double century, Mahela Jayawardena, it said, had overtaken his compatriot, Kumar Sangakkara, to take the No 1 spot in the world rankings. When the game offers no result — no chance of a result, more importantly — no fluctuating fortunes, no interest and no drama, what else but dry statistics is there to talk about? What the ICC’s press release should have said, of course, was that the umpires and the match referee had marked the Ahmedabad pitch down as unacceptably poor and that the groundsman’s penalty would be a period without international cricket. The ICC has recognised that the definition of a poor pitch has had to change. For decades, particularly during eras when the balance between bat and ball was more finely tuned, a poor pitch would be regarded as one that gave an undue advantage to the bowler. Something, perhaps, that started too green, too damp or too dry so that it crumbled too quickly. Indeed, it was the ECB that was forced to introduce guidelines to make pitches more batsmen-friendly after a few years in the late 1980s when counties took home advantage to extremes. But things have swung too far the other way. The balance between bat and ball — the principal thing that keeps cricket entertaining — has become horribly skewed, so that there is an urgent need to make bland pitches a thing of the past. The ICC recognised this recently — something that the MCC world cricket committee endorsed keenly — when it said that pitches that offered negligible bounce, carry, seam movement or turn should be marked poor. It was as if the Ahmedabad pitch was prepared as a deliberate test case. Enervating Test cricket is nothing new in India. In 1981-82 they played England in one of the dullest series of all time. India sat on their 1-0 lead, piled up huge scores on featherbed pitches and reduced over-rates to about ten an hour. England retaliated with occasionally fewer, and so with neither side attempting to win, the next five games petered out into blood-sapping draws. Phil Edmonds reckoned that the subsequent desertion of some players to South Africa was not so much because of the money but because they were “bored to the soul with Test cricket after that tourâ€. Amazingly, 394,000 people — a record at the time — watched the six-match series, although, presciently, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack warned the Indian board of the need to “put some ginger in their pitches before crowds start losing interestâ€. Crowds flocked to those bore draws because there were few alternatives, in life or sport. That is not the case now. India’s emergence as an economic superpower has transformed daily options in parts of the sub-continent and Test cricket has its own challenges from within. So there were great swaths of empty seats in Ahmedabad and Kanpur, as there are for Test cricket the world over, except in England, Australia and only occasionally elsewhere. Of course, you wouldn’t have to be such a cynic to wonder whether it is in Indian cricket’s interests to strangle whatever remaining relevance there is in the Test game. They now have more lucrative fish to fry. But it doesn’t matter whether it is Test or Twenty20 cricket, if bowlers continue to be treated as second-class citizens, interest will wane. The fall of a wicket is the most dramatic moment in cricket, something the game is all too quickly forgetting.

STFU Atherton. Also factually poor article as crowds were brillinat