Bradman is the greatest, Sachin comes only second: Waugh, Benaud

[jonas10]

Arre bhai, in 100mts less time = faster but in cricket lower avg is not better .... Bolt had to clock a faster time than Owens (even marginally) for you to imagine that he would beat Owens, similarly to be better than DBG, a batsman has to avg more than him or at least close to him (considering the different periods) :winky: On one hand, you are saying that Bolt would beat Owens based on Bolt's faster time and on the other, you are picking a batsman with a lower average to out do someone who avg almost twice as much. It's like picking a runner, who runs 100 mts in say 10 sec over someone who ran it in 6 or 7 sec Anyways, thanks for making my day. This thread always throws up something interesting. I hope more and more tendulkar fanboys post here

I know lower average is not better duhhhh... Point is SRT's generation people are just physically superior, technologically more savvy and better all around. Example...Bradman never ever faced a 100MPH over in his life... He didnt even hit a dozen sixes in his entire career...fielding was a complete joke then - there were no Jonty Rhodes.... Who was the Adam Gilchrist/MS Dhoni of his time that would have surely stumped him once or twice. Point is this generation the bowlers, keepers, fielders batsmen are all better especially when you look at nearly 80 years ago. There is not a SINGLE pre world war athlete that is superior to his post world war 2 equivalent. Therefore SRT > Bradman :yay:

[yoda]

There is not a SINGLE pre world war athlete that is superior to his post world war 2 equivalent.

Yes, we are becoming greater and greater every day. Ain't it great? :yay:

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Guest BossBhai]

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[Guest BossBhai]

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[akshayxyz]

No its quite a reasonable analogy. Both were dominant athletes close to 100 years ago when both sports were in their infancy. Owens may have been a star cause lots of other countries like Jamaica where Bolt is from had no concept of sprinting, track and field had no marketability and no one was interested in participating til stars like Micheal Johnson and Carl Lewis showed the kind of money that could be made and there was absolutely no technology or training with the methods we have now. Same with Bradman, no competition no great bowlers, no money in the sport, no one analyzing his every stroke from 50 angles putting it in a super computer and then saying do this to beat him. Bolt has to compete with superpowers like the US that have all the money in the world, all the technology in the world and every means to find his weaknesses yet they cannot. Same with SRT who has had his every at bat analyzed since the age 16. As well he has faced vastly superior competition and cricket is a much more international game that has seen such greats as Ponting, Sobers, Richards, Akram. Please tell me the greats that SAW Bradman play in his prime and comment on his superiority.

Thats what my point was - I was being sarcastic. It is more likely to find statistical outliers in an amateurish/infancy/(relatively less competitive) setup than in the kind of setup it is today. Besides, it is simplistic to attribute the deviation to an individual - in a system involving complex interactions of individuals of various skills ( bowling, batting, fielding)...all affecting the variable ( average) in different direction, frequency, and magnitude.

[akshayxyz]

Ok.. enough of comparison of greatness of SRT and DGB. Here is an interesting stat, however great these two are - both of them failed to perform under pressure :P And Sachin's 100s bring more bad luck to his team than Don's 100s to his - as in the lost matches Don scores 100s in 16.67% times, while SRT scores 100s 23.9% times. V_D should be proud of this finding.

[zen]

Let's get a few things sorted out: 1. Those who think that Tendulkar is the greatest have in a way accepted that you don't have to dominate others to be considered as the greatest. Yet, some feel compelled to argue that Bradman would not have dominated in modern era so he is not the greatest as if it were a point. If you accepted Tendulkar w/o him dominating, you cannot argue that since Don may not have dominated, he isn't the greatest 2. Some clowns keep talking abt how crappy the bowlers were in Bradman's era. So the question is are all the bowlers of today's era exceptional? (Only recently our own bowling attack was under fire). If the answer is no, then today's batsmen do play against crappy bowlers. Now there may be a few good bowlers but what would be the point of talking abt them when the batsman they claim to be the greatest does not even avg 50% of what the best avg against some of the bowlers is. Say you are averaging 35 against these top bowlers of the top sides of your time and you have folks in your own era who avg twice as much against these bowlers so what right does it give you to assume that someone like Bradman's avg would not even avg 35 against these bowlers (when folks have avg 70 or more against these bowlers). Morally speaking at least the guy whom you claim to be the greatest based on facing better bowlers should have done well against better bowlers for you to even create an hypothesis of someone from 30s wouldn't be able to adjust and that too through the process of evolution If I got paid to debate against many of these fanboys, I would make a few million dollars easily :yay:

[pensionplan]

Except that it isn't Lennie Pascoe that is bowling in the link that you quoted

Yes it was the 1988 test. Pascoe was gone by then. Did not pay attention to the date in the video. The facial features and the finishing has striking resemblance though.

[The Outsider]

Wrong. Because you are making a very simplistic and erroneous assumption that the competition was the same in the two ERAs. Lets not even talk about the skills. I mean how are you going to factor the dramatic commercialization due to the professional ERA that we live in today ? You must be joking if you are going to claim that there are statistical models that can factor in amateur/professional nature of sports environment before coming up with suggestions on what numbers must be attained to equal Bradman ?

Well in that case we can never agree on a common metric. Because I find it absurd to put people in an instantaneous time machine and play them against others who have grown up and developed their game in a different environment.

Moreover batting average ALONE is no longer a measure of a batsman's greatness. Sangakkara averages more than SRT but nobody will put him alongside SRT even by mistake. Today they look at a lot more things than mere batting average to find out who is the top guy. I don't want to bore you with those details as you most certainly know them.

Never said batting average is the only metric. Please don't attribute things to me which I have not said. Sangakkara's and Tendulkar's averages are similar, so you would look into other factors like longevity, home/away performance etc.

Nope. Marshall, Holding,Garner,Croft , Ambrose,Hadlee etc all have Strike rates that are beyond reach of mediocre bowlers with fantastic avgs to go with that.Unless ofcourse you consider Steyn, Donald, Akhtar, Waqar to be mediocre bowlers. But what is certain is that absolutely no fast bowler from the 30s and 40s figures in the alltime top 50 list of bowlers by Strike rate never mind both avg and s/r.

Okay this is where it gets irritating - when you start denying obvious facts. You have a stats DB - compute the strike rate in the 70s with the 00s. Let me give you some examples - Hadlee has a strike rate of 51, Lee and Ntini of 53. Do you think Hadlee is even in the same ballpark as these two bowlers? Imran and Andy Roberts have a worse strike rate than Mitchell Johnson and Chris Cairns - surely even you would agree that's a joke. If you can't see this obvious computable fact that strike rate is a junk measure because of the way the game has got quicker, please let me know and I won't waste my time.

Then what is the logic in assuming the 30s and 40s a benchmark ? Logic dictates that you start from the top. Infact you cannot even entertain achievements from the significantly lesser standards. This is the exact same principle that goes behind people sneering at records against BD and Zim. The only difference here is that the English and Aussies are the mai-baaps of the game and have the clout that comes with the first mover advantage . No matter how bleedingly amateur the game looks people will are conditioned to treat that as gospel. This is how world order works in cricket. As goose had explained beautifully if Bradmans career were to follow Tendulkars career the burden of proof would shift to the Bradman ERA.

Who said 30s and 40s are benchmarks? Again, don't attribute things to me which I haven't said. 30s and 40s international cricket was the best cricket played in the world at that time and Bradman excelled in it, like no one before or after has.

Dont agree with that at all ... because one look at the video footage from the 30s tells me how drastically different the game was. To take batting averages from that time frame and conclude that Bradman would continue to lead the pack today by whatever margin by forming a chain using his contemporaries is just baseless. Using that I can make Greg Chappell just as good a player of spin in India as Hayden. There are other holes in that theory that I will explain some other time. I have already mentioned 2 before : The link between Sobers and his previous gen ( Hutton ) and the rules and regulations of the game.

There are no holes in the theory - it's straightforward to follow for anyone who chooses to apply common sense that there is nothing like discontinuous eras. The game has evolved as a continuous functions and any changes to game have been gradual to which all prevailing great and good cricketers have adapted. Sobers-Hutton is not any hole as you would like to believe - there can be other pairs chosen to demonstrate the same point. Taking up a post war Hutton's decline in average in old age as a 'hole' is naive. I remember asking you earlier as well - if there is a time when cricket all of a sudden became competitive and you had said mid 70s. I showed there was no difference in batting averages before and after 1975 for a certain sample of batsmen like Gavaskar, I Chappell, G Chappell, Viswanath, Lloyd. So whatever changes happened at that time, these guys comfortably adapted to. http://indiancricketfans.com/showpost.php?p=1003629&postcount=371 Why didn't their averages plunge? Unless you can show a period of time before and after which there was a drastic reduction in batting averages of the top players of the time, you have no proof to say Bradman would not have adapted to the changes in cricket.

[The Outsider]

BTW I found a video that shows Lindwall with his full run up ... his entire runup is about 11 steps ... I dont think it is possible to generate speeds like what Steyn can with such a short runup. The only 2 people who could do that AFAIK were Wasim and Akhtar. http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=61368

What? You are going to count steps in a run up to measure speed? I'd rather take Sobers word who has faced Lindwall and Lillee. BTW, look at Imran's run up and tell me if his strides are the same size as Linwall's? So much for counting steps to measure the length of a run up even, forget about speed of the bowlers. _cTar3tfMow&feature=related

[Guest BossBhai]

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[Raghav_12]

I remember asking you earlier as well - if there is a time when cricket all of a sudden became competitive and you had said mid 70s. I showed there was no difference in batting averages before and after 1975 for a certain sample of batsmen like Gavaskar, I Chappell, G Chappell, Viswanath, Lloyd. So whatever changes happened at that time, these guys comfortably adapted to. http://indiancricketfans.com/showpost.php?p=1003629&postcount=371 Why didn't their averages plunge? Unless you can show a period of time before and after which there was a drastic reduction in batting averages of the top players of the time, you have no proof to say Bradman would not have adapted to the changes in cricket.

Sir Garry Sobers, averaged 45 in last six years of his cricket (68-74) while in earlier 14 years it was 64. His last six years overall average was also boosted by average of 75 against minnows India. http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/52946.html?class=1;spanmin1=30+Mar+1968;spanval1=span;template=results;type=batting http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/player/52946.html?class=1;spanmax2=29+Mar+1968;spanval2=span;template=results;type=batting Not saying whether Sobers performed poorly because of improvement in bowling or any other factor, but you can't really say that Sobers adopted adroitly to the change in game if any of that happened around 70's. Sorry, don't have much time, so have to make this what bossbhai would say "hit and run shortie" :-).

[The Outsider]

^ Firstly, what happened in 1968 which made Sobers average go down? Which cricketing change are you attributing his drop to? Secondly, his lower average is due to his performance against New Zealand, a team which even 'minnows' India had beaten in their home. And please don't make up labels like 'minnows' for teams just to prove a non existent point.

[jonas10]

Hypothetical: Today at my work here in Canada I played cricket with a bunch of people. I scored a triple century and hit 50 boundaries and averaged 300. It doesnt matter that the bowlers suck, the fielding is a joke and there is no strategy on how to bowl me, no technology to survey me, no pressure on me. I guess that makes me as good as Don Bradman then...cause everything I just said is the same with him. Played only the garbage England team, played when the sport was a hobby no one cared about as opposed to now when 2 billion people follow the game, and no technology to analzye him and destroy him (he got owned with short balls by the way). No quality spin, no quality fielding, no proper stadiums, no epic series 24/7 no fans threatning to burn down his house.

[zen]

LINK Sobers avg for 1970 to 1974 was 52 Appears as if that clown picked 1968 because in that way Sobers avg would be below 50 :hehe: PS If you look at the date in his link, he chose 30th March. The link below will tell you why: LINK ^ :giggle: On one hand, folks keep Sachin, one of the most noble and genuine cricketers ever, and on the other resort to such cheap tricks .... Take that avatar off :hitler:

[jonas10]

Let's get a few things sorted out: 1. Those who think that Tendulkar is the greatest have in a way accepted that you don't have to dominate others to be considered as the greatest. Yet, some feel compelled to argue that Bradman would not have dominated in modern era so he is not the greatest as if it were a point. If you accepted Tendulkar w/o him dominating, you cannot argue that since Don may not have dominated, he isn't the greatest 2. Some clowns keep talking abt how crappy the bowlers were in Bradman's era. So the question is are all the bowlers of today's era exceptional? (Only recently our own bowling attack was under fire). If the answer is no, then today's batsmen do play against crappy bowlers. Now there may be a few good bowlers but what would be the point of talking abt them when the batsman they claim to be the greatest does not even avg 50% of what the best avg against some of the bowlers is. Say you are averaging 35 against these top bowlers of the top sides of your time and you have folks in your own era who avg twice as much against these bowlers so what right does it give you to assume that someone like Bradman's avg would not even avg 35 against these bowlers (when folks have avg 70 or more against these bowlers). Morally speaking at least the guy whom you claim to be the greatest based on facing better bowlers should have done well against better bowlers for you to even create an hypothesis of someone from 30s wouldn't be able to adjust and that too through the process of evolution If I got paid to debate against many of these fanboys, I would make a few million dollars easily :yay:

Rett...do you know how much of a recluse Bradman was? If he had to live 5 minutes in SRT's world he would probably commit suicide. Try to find any interviews of him - they are about as plentyful as a solar eclipse. He would never be able to handle the pressure SRT has in the modern game with 2 billion people following it as opposed to when Bradman played and it was a richman's hobby to watch people bat for a month.

[sarcastic]

^^ Please respect other debaters by not calling them as clowns!!!! You say Sobers is better than Sachin Tendulkar!!!!! Not many would agree with it :giggle:

[Guest BossBhai]

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[zen]

^^ Please respect other debaters by not calling them as clowns!!!! You say Sobers is better than Sachin Tendulkar!!!!! Not many would agree with it :giggle:

have you ever read his theories like (from the top of my head) 1. Zim scenario, where he asked that in future if someone avgs 30 would we still see Flower as the best Zim batsman. Flower avg around 50, iirc 2. He created antilog to show that Sachin would avg 100+ in Bradman's era 3. Said that Bradmans avg of 56 vs McCabe 40 odd shows Bradman is not above his peers, ignoring that avg of 50s (tendulkar) and 40s (ganguly) are different levels! Now he cherry picked Sobers record! I wouldn't respect such persons in real life so find no reason to do so on the interenet.