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

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[Zero_Unit]

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion ... even stats can't turn their head around.

[Bradman99]

It's not my fault that I only played against my neighbors across the street. What is to say I wouldn't have averaged 400, if not a better average if I played against Australia ? This whole debate is rather tedious. It's been over-discussed, I am the best of the contemporaries in my street, Tendulkar the best of his contemporaries in international cricket. That is how I see things. It is too subjective to compare which one of us is better, though i grudgingly admit that Tendulkar plays that backfoot cover drive a tad better than me.

Right, so comparing street cricket to international cricket is realistic.

[Sachin=GOD]

As Henry Ford said about the Model T - "you can have any color you want so long as its black", I say about greatest cricketers - "you can call any cricketer the greatest of all time so long as its Goddy" :bow:

[mishra]

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion ... even stats can't turn their head around.

Opinion and facts differ. Dont put your opinion as fact. BTW whats basis of your opinion. Excel sheet? Or some espn program? Or some black and white youtube video

[Bradman99]

Opinion and facts differ. Dont put your opinion as fact. BTW whats basis of your opinion. Excel sheet? Or some espn program? Or some black and white youtube video

Are you not trying to put your opinion out as fact as well?

[mishra]

Are you not trying to put your opinion out as fact as well?

No Larwood was a average bowler and no way near likes of Ambrose. Thats fact. Indian team madeup of Nawabs and Lord/Sir whoeverer played were crap at bowling is a fact. Not a opinioni

[Raghav_12]

Tendulkar and Bradman: Beyond the average argument Some very interesting points. Overall a good read on the topic.

Tendulkar and Bradman: Beyond the average argument Tendulkar and Bradman: Beyond the average argument - Part I http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/s...ow/8488865.cms Tendulkar and Bradman: Beyond the average argument - Part II http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/s...ow/8489364.cms Tendulkar and Bradman: Beyond the average argument - Part III http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/s...ow/8489414.cms Tendulkar and Bradman: Beyond the average argument - Part IV http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/s...ow/8489440.cms Tendulkar and Bradman: Beyond the average argument - Part I On average, Donald Bradman is a genius. On all things average-related, no one comes anywhere close to him. His "average supremacy" is a mathematical truism and there can be no argument about it. Choosing the best batsman to have ever taken guard, however, is not an average concern and is a rather complex problem. Not once in his Test career, not even once, did Bradman get a score in the nineties. Yet that is the score that he is supposed to get every time he goes out to bat. Bradman understood this and, therefore, said: "Dealing with comparisons in cricket is harder and more complex than in most other sports." Swimmers, he argued, can be assessed strictly by the clock because "the water hasn't changed" (he was talking well before swimsuits became scientifically bespoke). Bradman elaborated: "No such comparison is possible in cricket. Averages can be a guide... but are not conclusive because pitches and conditions have changed." To that can be added innumerable factors: the cricket ball, the bats, all protective gear, laws, demands of the game, formats of the game, the amount of cricket played in a season, the pace at which the game is played (number of overs per hour), the public scrutiny and media glare, the money, the live telecasts, the number of grounds, the number of oppositions; one can go on and on about how everything has changed. And yet with all that hindrance the fact still remains that there is nothing that is as alluring and tempting as making a comparison. Compared to Tendulkar or Lara or any other modern player, Bradman is a ghost, a phantom, because you can analyse the modern players till the cows come home as there is so much footage available, while there is not even enough to watch him for a couple of sessions. So we will look at the facts but more importantly listen to the stories as they are more potent and because stories are infinitely more fun, they survive longer. What is essential is the care required to weigh a story because our weakness and our gullibility for them can lead us to believe a clever (read false) story used precisely to obliterate the real one. The framework of the argument draws from a few paragraphs by author Nassim Nicholas Taleb and his curiously-compelling book "The Black Swan" (The Impact of the Highly Improbable). It is easy to see from personal experience as also from history that life is a cumulative effect of a handful of significant shocks. History and societies do not crawl. They jump. They go from fracture to fracture, with a few vibrations in between. Human experience is the same, dominated by a few major events that shape everything in an individual's life while the rest is just a fill in the blanks; a vain attempt to understand what really happened. There are two possible ways to approach phenomena. The first is to rule out the extraordinary and focus on the "normal". The second is to consider that in order to understand a phenomenon, one first needs to consider the extremes. It may sound outlandish but one has to understand extreme events in order to figure out ordinary ones. For instance, if you want to get an idea of a friend's temperament, ethics, and personal elegance, you need to look at him under the tests of severe circumstances and not under the regular rosy glow of daily life. Can we understand health without considering wild diseases and epidemics? Can you assess the danger a criminal poses by examining only what he does on an "ordinary" day? The normal, in what we are discussing, is often irrelevant. The average and all its cousins, especially bell curve methods of inference, which tell us what is not important need to be ignored. Why? Because the "bell curve" ignores large deviations, can't handle them and yet makes us confident that we have tamed uncertainty. What a batsman would get on a particular day does not depend on his average. A popular joke in Australia goes like this: What do you call a Pom cricketer with a 100 next to his name? A bowler. The first point is that if the hundred of an English cricketer can be reduced to the number of runs that each of their bowler leaks then where does it leave Sir Don Bradman, who played 71.15% of his cricket against them? May I suggest that it is not Bradman's average but the quality of the opposition attack that his greatness rests on? Tendulkar and Bradman: Beyond the average argument - Part II Ian Chappell in a column a while ago wrote: "Sehwag has often said he doesn't think too much when he's batting. After years of speculation about what, apart from his enormous skill, made Sir Donald Bradman so great, I've come to the conclusion that a crucial attribute was his ability to bat with an uncluttered mind." That's not all Sehwag has in common with Bradman. They are the only batsmen to surpass 290 three times in Test cricket. They also comfortably have the best strike rates among the high scorers of their respective generations. This leads to an interesting thought on batsmanship: should greater consideration be given to stroke production rather than technique in moulding young batsmen? After all, efficient run-scoring is not just a statistical exercise; it's the first rung on the climb to victory. There can be no argument that Bradman had the better technique, which speaks volumes for Sehwag standing by the conviction he revealed to Wright in his early days". (Sehwag had told John Wright after failing in an innings "watch me in the next innings") By saying that there can be no argument that Bradman had the better technique, Chappell has actually created the need for an argument. What does he mean by saying that Bradman had a better technique? He's contradicted himself within a line where he first said should greater consideration be given to stroke production rather than technique in moulding young batsmen? Implying what? That stroke production is independent of technique. Bradman held the bat in a way that the coaching manual would never prescribe and there was also an attempt to make him change his grip early on, which thankfully he didn't. He had what has later been termed as a "rotary grip" and biomechanical studies have been done to show its efficiency. He kept the bat in between his two feet with a closed face contrary to keeping it behind the right leg. His back-lift was also peculiar. There are many references about him being unorthodox and about his not being easy on the eye. Bradman was self-taught and Sehwag also has a natural game. Ironically, not a single batsman in Australia or anywhere in the world has been inspired to follow the "Bradman Way". In the modern era, where the coaches are extremely well-equipped and there is a lot of video analysis just see how dashing this innings of 319 in 304 balls by Sehwag must have been after South Africa had piled on 540 runs that their coach Mickey Arthur couldn't stop gushing about it. Arthur said: "Last night I looked at every possible scenario that could develop and this wasn't one. I didn't think in my wildest dreams they would score at such a rate. Again that's only due to one man." "I think that's the best Test-match innings I've ever seen," he said. "The way he played today was absolutely amazing. We tried to attack him, we defended against him, tried to bowl straight lines, bowl wide, over the wicket, round the wicket, did everything possible. And he countered us." And there was the pressure of runs. The attack had Dale Steyn, Makhaya Ntini, Morne Morkel, Jacques Kallis, and Paul Harris. The late Bob Woolmer also made this comparison when Sehwag got a double hundred against Pakistan. What was said about Bradman by people who saw him bat early on? Neville Cardus, England's captain Percy Chapman, and Surrey's Percy Fender who saw his debut series were not impressed at all. They were more impressed by Archie Jackson, a player who died at 23 but was considered by many as superior to Bradman. They thought Bradman with his "cross-bat technique" would struggle on slow English wickets. "He will always be in the category of the brilliant, if unsound, ones. Promise there is in Bradman in plenty, though watching him does not inspire one with any confidence that he desires to take the only course which will lead him to a fulfilment of that promise. He makes a mistake, then makes it again and again; he does not correct it, or look as if he were trying to do so. He seems to live for the exuberance of the moment," Percy Fender wrote about him. This could well have been said for Sehwag. And this one again on Bradman, "he was the most curious example of good and bad batting that I have ever seen". Contrary to what has been said about uncovered wickets, the anecdotes from the era indicate that "batsmen scored mountainous heaps of runs" in those times. The pitches were the equivalent of an "as-much-as-you-can-eat-buffet" for run makers. The only problem was sticky wickets where Bradman never succeeded and Jack Hobbs was considered a master on them. The difference between the average of Bradman and the next best is also answered by Sehwag as no one in the modern game has got over 250 four times at a strike-rate bordering near hundred. Imagine a player like Sehwag playing mostly one opposition in nine grounds once every two years and that too after six practice games in timeless matches and you can see the average argument flying out of the window. And although Bradman once said that "Chappell's knowledge of history would fit on a postage stamp", we can bypass the Don here as Chappell, despite accusations of being the most one-eyed cricket commentator, gives some bold opinions and backs them up. What is interesting is to consider why would Bradman attack Chappell's sense of history so openly? History has parallel narratives. The one that comes with the books and the other one that is more potent, raw, more coloured but still hard-to-dismiss version that travels through human beings. Chappell had access to the other history as his grandfather Victor Richardson was the vice-captain of the Australian team during that 1930 tour of England. Like everyone else he too didn't get along with Bradman and was quite chuffed by the "Bradmania" that engulfed Australia after the 1930 tour and said: "We could have played anyone without Bradman but we couldn't have played a blind school without Grimmett." Richardson would also have known about the conduct of Bradman during the Bodyline Series and sensing an independent streak in Chappell, Bradman may have tried to discredit him even before he said anything. The most-revealing comparison is that both Sehwag and Bradman appear to have the same weakness: they are both vulnerable to the well-directed rising delivery. On wickets that had juice a capable bowler could create problems for Bradman. The aboriginal bowler Eddie Gilbert is just a footnote in Australian cricket history but in 1931 he had his one moment under the sun. On the memorable day when Gilbert knocked Bradman to the ground with the force of his ball for a duck, Bradman said it was the fastest bowling he had ever faced. Despite slow motion film of his style that showed that he was bowling correctly, accusations of cheating persisted and he was eventually forced to retire in disgrace. He became an alcoholic and after 30 years in a mental institute he died and was buried in an unmarked grave. Another all-time great fast bowler was in his prime two years later and bullied Bradman into submission. Harold Larwood never bowled in a Test match after the Bodyline Series but it is this one series that reveals everything worth knowing both about Bradman and Larwood. Bradman the nation-building phenomenon, who gave hope to millions during times of extraordinary hardship during the Great Depression, has no parallel in sporting history. The impact he had on the lives of ordinary countrymen is unique and incomparable. That is a subject of social life and his comparison in this respect can only be done with people who have transformed nations. That impact is deliberately avoided for judging him as a batsman. Tendulkar and Bradman: Beyond the average argument - Part III Since we haven't seen much of Bradman it would be better to take a look at two of his big innings by going through what it looked like to people then. Let's see the 254 at Lord's that Bradman himself called his best and most-perfect innings. "It can with truth be said, however, that the England bowling in no other game not only looked but actually was so entirely lacking in sting and effect. Records went by the board. Australia, in putting together a total of 729 before declaring with only six wickets down, broke four. The Australians batted to a set plan, Woodfull and Ponsford steadily wearing down the bowling for Bradman later on to flog it. Nearly three hours were occupied over the first 162 runs, but in another two hours and three-quarters no fewer than 242 came. While in the end Bradman made most runs very great credit was due to Woodfull and Ponsford who, when England's bowling was fresh, put on 162 for the first wicket." It was the debut match for Gubby Allen who was expensive and ineffective. The Australians batted for 232 overs before declaring. Everyone who came to the crease got runs and the lower middle-order got them at almost a run a ball. Larwood didn't play at Lord's and medium-fast bowler Maurice Tate was the lone capable man in the attack. The England tour of 1930 where Bradman made that glorious impact needs to be put into context as that is his high point. Larwood bowled 5 overs in the second innings at Trent Bridge, where Bradman got 131. Hammond bowled 29 overs and Tate had to carry the burden heavily by bowling 50 overs. The 334 that Bradman got at Leeds was also not reported as an exceptional innings and the praise reads a bit diffused. "For one thing, the English fielding compared most unfavourably with that in the earlier matches. Tyldesley, avowedly brought in with the idea of keeping the Australian batsmen quiet, again failed in his mission, Geary's bowling had no terrors at all while Larwood still looking very drawn as the result of his illness, had not the stamina to bowl at his full pace and was terribly expensive. Tate, as usual, bore the brunt of the attack and bowled as pluckily as ever but, taken all round, the Englishmen lacked the attributes of a great side and Hammond alone gave over fifty runs. His Wisden Cricketers' Almanack profile says: He knows as well as anyone, though, that with so much more emphasis being placed on containment and so many fewer overs being bowled, his 309 of 70 years ago would be nearer 209 today. Australian writer Gideon Haigh in one of his articles said: "Some day in our lifetimes, the last person to have seen Sir Donald Bradman bat in a Test match will pass away. It may not be marked, like the deaths of the last survivors of the Titanic or the first day of the Somme, but in cricket's terms it will be as significant." Bradman knew this and he also knew that the average argument could be punctured easily and that is why in his later years he became neurotic in defending his batting during the Bodyline Series. Cricket's pre-eminent historian David Frith in his seminal work Bodyline Autopsy said: "It helped to have known many of the cricketers who took part in those matches, and I was glad also to have some input from Gilbert Mant, the last of the journalists who covered the tour. It was he who passed on the most astonishing revelation of all: the name of the player who leaked Bill Woodfull's forceful protest to the England manager during that stormy Adelaide Test match." This is what Rob Steen said about the book: "No detail is left unturned. Even the state matches are brought to life. The source of the dressing-room leak at Adelaide is examined in especially revealing fashion. Bradman, despite decades of denial, emerges as Prince Machiavelli." The Don's embittered team mate Jack Fingleton is quoted in the final paragraph: "I think, looking back, the Australians perhaps made too much fuss about it (Bodyline)." Bradman played six innings in three tour games before the first Bodyline Test and made a total of 103 runs at an average of 17.16 with 36 as his highest score. He complained to the Australian Board even before the Tests had started and then in mysterious circumstances missed the first Test in Sydney. Douglas Jardine maintained that Bradman had an acute attack of nerves due to enormous Australian expectations; his running dispute with the Board about a contract to write for Sydney's Sun, and, of course, the prospect of facing Larwood. In the three Tests that mattered he made 293 runs at an average of 48.83. He made an unbeaten 103 in the second innings in Melbourne to go with his first-ball duck but crucially again with Larwood in no position to bowl in that essay due to bleeding feet. Was this an aberration or was this the only competitive series the Don ever played in? The impact of the Bodyline Series went well into the next season despite the absence of Larwood. Wisden wrote: "There were many occasions on which he (Bradman) was out to wild strokes. Indeed at one period he created the impression that, to some extent, he had lost control of himself and went in to bat with an almost complete disregard for anything in the shape of a defensive stroke. "At one stage, Bradman went 13 first-class innings without a century, the longest such spell of his career, prompting suggestions that Bodyline had eroded his confidence and altered his technique. After three Tests, the series was one-one and Bradman had scored 133 runs in five innings." One fast bowler in his prime cut Bradman's average of the previous series down by almost 60%. Was Bodyline unsporting and contrary to the spirit of cricket? Two batsmen got injured in the third Test at Adelaide and both of them due to their own mistakes as can be seen on YouTube - neither ball was bowled to a leg-side field and Woodfull was a slow-mover and Oldfield made a horrible misjudgment to pull a ball at Larwood's pace to leg-side from a foot outside off and he immediately clarified that it wasn't Larwood's fault. Harold Larwood got 33 wickets in the series and some of the other fast bowlers who accompany him in taking that many in a series are Curtly Ambrose, Jeff Thomson, Alan Davidson, Allan Donald, Malcolm Marshall, Colin Croft, and Sir Richard Hadlee. Tell a fast bowler that 33 wickets can be had by only bowling leg stump bouncers and then be prepared for his anger and his assault. In timeless matches Larwood had to make the batsman play to get wickets and not waste his energy by bowling a bouncer every ball. It was later said that he bowled less in the series than what Dennis Lillie and Jeff Thompson bowled in a day. The problem with Bodyline was that Bradman had to be spotless and therefore the entire series was blackened out. Simon Barnes holds the unique distinction of being the journalist to define the whole series in just one line: "Bodyline is the longest whinge in sporting history." The helmet argument: Gavaskar played without them when West Indies unleashed one fast bowler after the other in an era when cricket was a war zone and some 40 batsmen were sent to the hospital. He made 13 hundreds against them at an average that was 15 runs higher than his overall one. Average doesn't take into account the quality of the attack that a batsman has scored against. Tendulkar and Bradman: Beyond the average argument - Part IV Sachin Tendulkar India's Sachin Tendulkar hits a ball during the second day of the second Test against South Africa at Kingsmead Stadium in Durban. (AFP Photo) Bradman's comparison with Tendulkar is a facile exercise and Sehwag is the only right parallel. The amount of cricket and mass adulation that blighted the punctuated career of Bradman with mysterious illnesses is the amount Tendulkar plays every five years and God save him if privacy is also one of his concerns. Tendulkar may well hang his boots having played nearly four times the Test cricket that Bradman played and top it up with an unbelievable and equally immense One Day career. Bradman gave his game away when he came out with that beautiful story from his home in Adelaide. "Sir Donald Bradman was watching a 1996 World Cup match on television when he first saw Sachin Tendulkar bat. The Indian player's technique seemed strangely familiar. The Australian called his wife into the living room of their suburban Adelaide home. 'Who does this remind you of?' asked Bradman, then 87. The answer was obvious. 'I never saw myself play,' Bradman said later. 'But I feel that this player is playing much the same [way] I used to play.' What is Bradman trying to say here? Is he implying that the average of 99.94 is achieved by playing like this and so the equivalent of that in the modern era is somewhere over 56. You have to completely misunderstand Bradman the man and credulously believe Bradman the legend in order to swallow that. What is the one line that Bradman could not eradicate from his cricketing life and sits on almost every summary page you read about him: "Though his batting was not classically beautiful, it was always awesome." If you dig deep it is scattered around his knocks everywhere like clues at a crime scene. Bradman could not have been unaware of it and you can't give him the benefit of doubt here because there are instances that show how zealously he guarded his legacy. See this interaction with David Frith. "He once took me to task for writing that he bowled Wally Hammond out with a full-toss at Adelaide in 1933. 'It was not a full-toss!' But five or six participants in that Test match, including Hammond himself, had declared it a full-toss. And I discovered - too late - that Don himself had spoken of it as such in his radio summary very soon after the incident. Amazingly, all these years later, he seemed to regard the bowling of a full-toss as a symptom of defective character. I loved him for it." Bradman was greedy to the hilt and this comparison he made shows that he wanted all that he could have. Bradman was not elevating Tendulkar, in fact, he was trying to obliterate all anecdotal evidence about himself. Does Tendulkar from any angle look like an unorthodox player without beauty in his stroke play? Bradman was not copybook as far as looking elegant is concerned. Tendulkar is better than copybook and even his wild innovations look beautiful. Bradman had the average and what he badly needed was a model, so he chose the most-perfect and compact and perhaps the most-beautiful run-getter in the history of the game to serve his purpose. What he meant was that he got his runs at an average of 99.96 playing like Tendulkar does. And someday there would come a time when the last man to have watched him bat would pass away but what will remain forever is the way Tendulkar has got his runs. The Don was trying to perpetrate and preserve a false legacy. He gave it another tweak and expressed surprise on learning that Tendulkar had been coached, when he had invited the Little Master to his home in Adelaide during end-1990s, as he thought that Tendulkar like himself was a complete natural. So despite watching all his innings for a few years the Don did not bother to check anything about the player he compared to himself and later invited to his home. The life of Bradman shows he was never so casual about anything - especially not about his cricket. To judge Bradman you have to first see that he has a very small sample and therefore each observation matters as it affects the spread significantly. You have to put aside his average against the minnows South Africa, India and the West Indies and then count the innings where he played at least one world-class bowler. Hardly four or five bowlers who bowled to Bradman stand out in the history of the game. Don't underestimate the LBW law as in Bradman's time you could only be given out if the ball pitched and hit in line with the stumps and then went on to hit them. This automatically rules out the in-swinger, the in-cutter, and the off-spinning deliveries that pitch outside but come in enough to hit in line. This is as potent a weapon for the bowler as the catch or even more as you can pad up to any ball outside off and get away. The batsman also gets the advantage when he is unsure which way the ball would go as he can again pad up and nullify the in-coming as well as the out-going delivery. Bradman was out leg before just six times in his career. The argument that he was so good that he was rarely struck in front of the wicket does not hold as he was bowled 23 times. Tendulkar has played around two dozen bowlers who can lay a good claim to being in the list of the forty odd all-time best bowlers on wickets suiting them and made hundreds. What was said about Tendulkar during his early years? His maiden effort in Australia at Lismore when he was just 18 didn't go unnoticed and 1,500 people saw it. "Conditions were grey overhead and green underfoot, which made predicting the ball's flight path tricky. The bowling was top-shelf-Whitney, Lawson, Holdsworth, Matthews, Waugh, Waugh-and the batting a little gormless, all except for the one who was 18. Under the Oakes Oval pines he took careful guard, his head still, his footsteps like tiny, precise pin*****s, going backwards mostly, unless the bowler overpitched. Fifteen hundred people saw this, the great Alan Davidson among them. Davo was dumbfounded: "It's just not possible... such maturity. Tendulkar hit 82 that afternoon, when no one else passed 24, then 59 out of 147 in the second innings." Christian Ryan wrote. When Allan Donald first bowled to Tendulkar in an ODI at Eden Gardens he said "that it was blatantly clear that he was going to be a player to remember". He rated him the number one in his book and said that it is freakish to be so balanced at the crease. Tendulkar didn't have an average at 16 when people all across the world were lining up to see him and when Australian journalist Mark Ray was lingering around India's net sessions during his first trip to watch the boy wonder bat. Neither did Bradman have an average after his first Test but he was picked for the third. Players are not selected on averages and though it has, like net profit for a company, become the gold standard to judge cricketers it is just as misleading as relying on a sole figure to learn about the business of a company. Tendulkar would never equate himself or place himself higher than the Don but then playing oneself down and not even knowing what one has is an unmistakable sign of real greatness. Frith paid Bradman the ultimate compliment, "Bradman was not one in a million," he said. "He was much rarer." Despite a following that runs into thousands of millions, the tribute for Tendulkar is qualitatively-different and the essence of it is wonderfully captured by that Matrix line immortalized by Lana and Andy Wachowski: "He is the One."

[Sachinism]

tl;dr anyone?

[Sachin=GOD]

read the first part a few days ago. Didn't find it interesting enough so haven't read the rest.

[gaurav92]

Yaa PJ tl;dr

[Texan]

Bradman was and is the greatest! If Bradman had only played the number of Test matches Tendulkar has (forget ODIs and T20s), he would have made 100 Test centuries there itself. It is so unfair that some people on this forum time and again will try to prove that "Mr. Selfish" Sachin Tendulkar is the greatest ever. He is NOT. He is not even close. And there is no reason to belittle Bradman's accomplishments. Bradman played in an era where he had to face bowlers on uncovered pitches. There wasn't enough money in cricket to fund your life, so you had to do a separate job as well. Considering that nobody in history even came close to that average, Bradman is by far the greatest cricketer ever to have lived on this planet.

[jairamesh]

I don't rate Bradman. He played in an era of Amateurs. Though the greatest imo is Viv Richards. I have never seen him play live, but watching old videos of him playing still leave me gob-smacked at his shots and audacity to play them.

[Texan]

I don't rate Bradman. He played in an era of Amateurs. Though the greatest imo is Viv Richards. I have never seen him play live, but watching old videos of him playing still leave me gob-smacked at his shots and audacity to play them.

That seems unfair. You can't discard all the records of players who played in earlier eras. If anything, life was much tougher then, so I respect their achievements even more. As regards to Viv - I don't rate Viv Richards at all. He was a swashbuckler just like Sehwag. On his day, he could take apart any bowling attack. If you watched highlights of Sehwag's batting as well, you will get the same feeling... however, as we all know, Sehwag has his weaknesses (some major ones). Viv also had limitations and they just don't get that much attention now because highlights don't show you plays and misses etc.

[Old guy]

49 pages :woot: if we merge all threads related to this topic i think we will get near the 1000 pages mark :hmmm:

[rkt.india]

If Bradman had only played the number of Test matches Tendulkar has (forget ODIs and T20s), he would have made 100 Test centuries there itself. It is so unfair that some people on this forum time and again will try to prove that "Mr. Selfish" Sachin Tendulkar is the greatest ever. He is NOT. He is not even close. And there is no reason to belittle Bradman's accomplishments. Bradman played in an era where he had to face bowlers on uncovered pitches. There wasn't enough money in cricket to fund your life, so you had to do a separate job as well. Considering that nobody in history even came close to that average, Bradman is by far the greatest cricketer ever to have lived on this planet.

Bradman era was an era of amateurs, cannot take that seriously. :two_thumbs_up:

[vamos_rafa]

1,2,3,4...band karo ye atyachar... These comparisions have started to drive me :mad:

[velu]

49 pages :woot: if we merge all threads related to this topic i think we will get near the 1000 pages mark :hmmm:

Lets cross 100 pages first :hatsoff:

[akshayxyz]

^ Before that this thread choked at 49 pages, for almost a year.

[jairamesh]

That seems unfair. You can't discard all the records of players who played in earlier eras. If anything, life was much tougher then, so I respect their achievements even more. As regards to Viv - I don't rate Viv Richards at all. He was a swashbuckler just like Sehwag. On his day, he could take apart any bowling attack. If you watched highlights of Sehwag's batting as well, you will get the same feeling... however, as we all know, Sehwag has his weaknesses (some major ones). Viv also had limitations and they just don't get that much attention now because highlights don't show you plays and misses etc.

:hysterical: And you watched all of Bradman's innings live? And what were Viv Richard's limitations?