Tendulkar is the Bradman of today: British media

[Shakthi]

''Let us just say that Tendulkar is the Bradman of today - less hypnotic but scarcely less phenomenal'', according to cricket writer John Woodcock, who reckons the Indian icon has every chance of making his 50th Test century this week. In his column for 'The Times', Woodcock paid rich tributes to Tendulkar for his " insatiable" hunger to score runs and said comparing him to Bradman did not diminish the legendary Australian and his achievements. "Bradman, I believe, would have been proud to play today's game as well as Tendulkar does, just as Tendulkar, like all of us, holds Bradman in awe. Let us just say that Tendulkar is the Bradman of today - less hypnotic but scarcely less phenomenal - and leave it at that," Woodcock said. "There is every chance that Tendulkar will make his 50th Test hundred this week, against New Zealand, in itself an amazing achievement. But if Bradman had played the same number of Test innings (Tendulkar has played 280 to Bradman's 80), he would have finished with something like 100 hundred, given the rate at which he scored them," the veteran columnist wrote. Woodcock said physically, Tendulkar is the shorter and stockier of the two and with the sub-continent being the breeding ground of the world's most natural batsmen, there could be a few more talented cricketers from that region in the future. "What eventually it comes down to is opportunity, ambition and temperament. Tendulkar belongs to the school of those Indian batsmen (Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath were others) who make up for a lack of inches with eye, wrist and insatiability. He uses a bat so heavy that Bradman would have laughed at it. You need only to pick it up to realise how strong his arms must be," he said. "To say that Tendulkar, or anyone else for that matter, might be as good as Bradman does not diminish Bradman and his achievements. This is intended not as a comparison between Bradman and Tendulkar but as a celebration of a wonderful little Indian player - insatiable, resourceful, unflinching and orderly," Woodcock added. Tendulkar, who just needs one more century to record an amazing feat of 50 Test tons, has been in red-hot form from the beginning of this year when India toured Bangladesh. His appetite for runs and centuries has only increased with advancing years. The 37-year-old champion cricketer has accumulated a staggering 1270 runs from his last nine Tests (15 innings), embellished by six three-figure knocks that includes two double hundreds, for a Bradmanesque average of 97.69, a feat that fetched him this year's ICC Cricketer of the Year honour. http://www.deccanherald.com/content/110084/tendulkar-bradman-today-british-media.html

[achilles]

Sachin is the best there is today. This article emphasizes that. Good on deccanheard :)

[Roshanrocks]

:canabis: delicious

[Roshanrocks]

enjoy :two_thumbs_up: btw cheers :beer_yum:

yea

[Ranjha]

so was bradman the tendulkar of past? or was he better?

[Holysmoke]

Here is the article.. FYI, he said this in 2002:hehe:

Only Sachin Tendulkar can equal Don Bradman John Woodcock believes that Bradman would have been proud to play the modern game as well as Tendulkar does, just as the Indian is in awe of him John Woodcock Were H.M. Bateman alive, it would have all the makings of one of his cartoons: "The man who said Tendulkar is as good a batsman as Bradman." Drawn at one of cricket's shrines, the cartoon would have depicted those hearing such blasphemy in a state of shock, eyeballs popping out of their heads, their bodies contorted or prone. For all that, it is how good I believe Sachin Tendulkar to be. He is never going to dominate the game in the way that the Don did, or W.G.; nor will he be as masterful at the wicket as Vivian Richards, as sublime as Barry Richards, as majestic as Walter Hammond, as special as Denis Compton, as sparkling as Garfield Sobers or as serene as Frank Worrell. But with the exception of Vivian Richards, these all played a more indulgent, less rigorous game than today's. Bradman's overall Test average of 99.94 and first-class career average of 95.14 make him, of course, a phenomenon, a marvel whom men, women and children flocked to see, whether they were interested in cricket or not. Tendulkar's corresponding figures today are 57.58 and 61.30. The batsman with the next highest Test average after Bradman is the South African Graeme Pollock (60.97); the man with the next highest career average is the Indian Vijay Merchant (71.22), who hailed, like Tendulkar and the indomitable Sunil Gavaskar, from Bombay, that great nursery of natural batsmen. Pollock's Test career ended when he was 26, apartheid putting paid to it. For the benefit of those who never saw him play, he resembled the Australian Adam Gilchrist, tall, left-handed and, when his eye was in, a field-setter's nightmare. Besides his playing record, Bradman's knowledge of the game, his credentials as a captain, sagacity as an administrator and iconic status as an Australian set him apart from any other sportsman of the 20th century. In their achievements, sportsmen have to be judged against the context of their times, not least the principles that apply and the appliances that are available. By the age of 23 Bradman was a legend, just as Tiger Woods is today for setting new frontiers as a golfer. Bradman's contemporary, not on the green circle but the green baize, was Joe Davis, winner of the World Snooker Championship every year from 1927 to 1940 and the finest player there ever had been or surely ever could be. Yet today, thanks largely to the influence of television, Davis would be no more than first among many just as good. The fact that Tendulkar could never make 309 in a day in a Test match, as Bradman did at Headingley in 1930, is not because he is not good enough, but because, in today's game, he would have something like 30 fewer overs in which to do so. Nor, in 1930, were England's tactics focused on containment, as they would be now; nor were their bowlers backed by the tigerish fielding that has become commonplace. The corpulent Dick Tyldesley, wearing pumps and there, in 1930, to bowl leg breaks for England, could no more have thrown himself headlong at the boundary boards to turn a four into a three than he could have deserted his native Lancashire to play for Yorkshire. But the question is not whether cricket was different when Bradman played it; it so obviously was. Nor is it whether it was more or less difficult, or more or less fun then it is today. The question is whether Bradman really was better than anyone else can ever be, a nonpareil in fact. He wouldn't think so, certainly as far as talent is concerned. He believed several of those he played with to be every bit as gifted as he was, and that they lacked only (and what an "only"!) his powers of concentration. Today Tendulkar plays his 97th Test match. Ten days ago he played his 295th one-day international. However fit, dedicated and sturdy he is, the wear and tear of this, the never-endingness of it, and the expectations he carries are, I am afraid, bound to take their toll. Bradman played 52 Test matches for Australia and no one-day internationals in a career that lasted 16 years. Tendulkar plays for India, on average, every ten days. If he goes on until he is 40, as Bradman did, he may well finish with something in excess of 40,000 runs and 120 hundreds in Tests and one-day internationals, a record that could prove as unassailable as Bradman's own. The more Tendulkar plays against the same opposition, the more, in theory, they should be able to work out how to rein him in. In India last winter England were reduced to getting their slow left-armer, Ashley Giles, to bowl from over the wicket into the rough, a foot or more outside Tendulkar's leg stump, leaving him either to risk playing the sweep, made hazardous by the uncertain bounce of the ball, to pad the ball away or to be tempted into something wildly exotic. The whole episode was an act of submission by England, less violent but no less abject than the bodyline to which they resorted all those years ago to keep Bradman in check. It will be the greatest pity if Giles adopts the same cynical ploy in this forthcoming series: the umpires have it in their power to prevent it. They said of Bobby Jones - "the immortal Bobby" - that there would never be another golfer like him. Then came Jack Nicklaus, and they said the same of him. Now there is Woods. That there will never be another Jones is as true as when it was first said, because in this day and age nobody ever could win "the mighty Quadrilateral" - the Open and Amateur Championships of both Britain and America in the same year as he did. In just the same way there never will be another Bradman. But that doesn't mean to say that Tendulkar is not as good as Bradman, any more than that Woods is not as good as Jones. This is intended not as a comparison between Bradman and Tendulkar but as a celebration of a wonderful little Indian player - insatiable, resourceful, unflinching and orderly. Bradman, I believe, would have been proud to play the modern game as well as Tendulkar does, just as Tendulkar, like all of us, stands in awe of Bradman. "I wish I could bat like that," he told Stan McCabe as he was taking off his pads after making a dazzling 232 in the Trent Bridge Test of 1938. Today there is the same universal consensus that Tendulkar is the best batsman in the game, which is some commendation when you consider that, at 33, Brian Lara is in his prime and remember the wonders he has performed. Even more than Bradman, Tendulkar was a boy wonder. Bradman was 20 when he scored his first Test 100. Tendulkar scored his, against England at Old Trafford in 1990, when he was 17. His next, against Australia at Perth, when he was 18, on a pitch that makes greater demands of a batsman's courage and capacity to survive than any other, was an astounding innings. I was there, and wondered, even then, who else in the world could have played it. Bradman's wife was to say that Tendulkar reminded her, more than anyone else she had seen, of how the Don himself had played. Although Tendulkar is shorter than Bradman was, he is more thick set, and the much heavier bat that he uses (a good half-pound heavier) gives greater weight to his strokes. Against that, the helmet that Tendulkar always wears and Bradman never did (though he said he might have done in the Bodyline series had one been available) must, to some extent, be an impediment. Bradman's smile, as he doffed his cap and raised his bat to the crowd on reaching another hundred, was as much an image of an age as is the helmet that even the finest and more fearless batsmen now wear and which has so changed, in more senses than one, the face of the game.

[fineleg]

Tendulkar > Bradman or Bradman > Tendulkar or are they separate sets?

[Roshanrocks]

from "can equal" to "is" :woot:

[Temujin Khaghan]

Tendulkar is like an avatar of Bradman... he is like a part of the whole... same in essence and quality... but not in magnitude Tendulkar is Bradman, but Bradman is not Tendulkar

[Gunner_Mania]

Here is the article.. FYI' date=' he said this in 2002:hehe:[/quote'] Actually this is the article which the OP quotes. It is in today's Times UK :hehe:

Separated by the generations; joined by their genius To say so in Australia would be to invite invective, even eviction, but I have long thought that, simply as a batsman, Sachin Tendulkar is the equal of Sir Donald Bradman. He does not dominate the game in the way the Don did in the 1930s, but nor, I think, would the Don himself if he were playing in today’s much more calculating environment. There is every chance that Tendulkar will make his 50th Test hundred before the end of this month, in itself an amazing achievement. But if Bradman had played the same number of Test innings (Tendulkar has played 280 to Bradman’s 80) he would have finished with something like 100 hundreds, given the rate at which he scored them. Tendulkar’s Test average this year (97.69) is of Bradmanesque proportions, but his overall figure of 56.96 is dwarfed by Bradman’s 99.94. When W. G. was asked to name the best batsman he played with, he replied: “Give me Arthur”, meaning Arthur Shrewsbury, whose average in his 23 Tests was 35.47. They all played a very different game, albeit one that has always gone by the same name. Statistically, the long-held assertion that there will never be another Bradman still holds good, and almost certainly always will. Not only his batting, but his knowledge of the game, credentials as a captain, sagacity as an administrator and iconic status as an Australian set him apart from any other sportsman of the 20th century. However, he himself believed that there were certainly others with just as much ability, as is borne out by his remark to Stan McCabe after his team-mate’s stupendous 232 in the Trent Bridge Test match of 1938: “I’d love to be able to bat like that.” Much has been said about Bradman’s remarkable “eye”, yet when he submitted to having an optional eye test being carried out in Adelaide for purposes of research, nothing unusual cropped up. Concentration and total commitment, as well, of course, as relishing the moment, were what his wife picked out. She would hardly have liked to cite ruthlessness, too. “If he was not out overnight, he would restart his innings from the moment he woke up next morning,” she once told me. Tendulkar was understandably flattered when, upon their meeting, Bradman told him he thought that as batsmen they had much in common. Physically, Tendulkar is the shorter and stockier of the two. With the sub-continent being the breeding ground of the world’s most natural batsmen, there could be any number born with Tendulkar’s talent in the course of a year. What eventually it comes down to is opportunity, ambition and temperament. Tendulkar is not a lovely player in the sense that V.V.S. Laxman, Rahul Dravid and Mohammad Azharuddin have been, or Ranjitsinhji and his nephew, Duleepsinhji must have been, or David Gower was, or Greg Chappell and Mark Waugh could be. But nor was Bradman. Commercialism and gracefulness are by no means necessarily compatible. When he put his mind to it, the most complete batsman I have seen, including Bradman and Tendulkar, was probably Barry Richards, the most overpowering Vivian Richards, the most disarming Denis Compton, the most serene Frank Worrell, the most majestic Walter Hammond, the most dazzling Brian Lara, the most expansive Garfield Sobers. But none had Bradman’s abiding dominance or Tendulkar’s staying power. And perhaps none of them, as an 18-year old, could have played the innings that Tendulkar did for India against Australia in Perth in 1992, when he made 114 on a pitch that still demanded more of a batsman’s courage and capacity to survive than any other. I was there to see it and wrote in these columns that, “Playing as he did yesterday Tendulkar is arguably already the best batsman in the world ... He showed maturity, tenacity and judgment that were quite extraordinary for someone so young. On top of that, he has a wonderfully sound technique, stands beautifully at the wicket and footwork that looks after itself.” Not unlike Colin Cowdrey when, a week after his 22nd birthday and without a championship hundred to his name, he made the first, best and most valuable of his 22 Test hundreds, against Australia in Melbourne in 1954, driving Ray Lindwall and Keith Miller to kingdom come as though unaware of the scale of it. And Tendulkar seems as run-hungry and nerveless as ever. Incredible! Tendulkar belongs to the school of those Indian batsmen (Sunil Gavaskar and Gundappa Viswanath were others) who make up for a lack of inches with eye, wrist and insatiability. He uses a bat so heavy that Bradman would have laughed at it. You need only to pick it up to realise how strong his arms must be. Just as the modern driver sends the golf ball anything up to 50 yards farther than those made 30 or 40 years ago, so the modern bat makes a mockery of today’s much shortened boundaries. MCC may well have been lax in keeping an eye on the built-in power of the bat. To say that Tendulkar, or anyone else for that matter, might be as good as Bradman does not diminish Bradman and his achievements. Bradman, I believe, would have been proud to play today’s game as well as Tendulkar does, just as Tendulkar, like all of us, holds Bradman in awe. Comparing the leading players of different generations, especially when the generations are far apart, is usually more diverting than meaningful. All we can be sure of is that today’s two unquestionably great batsmen, Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting, would always have excelled. Against the same England attack and the same decidedly stately (by today’s standards) fielding; on the same Headingley pitch and outfield, and facing the same number of balls (19 or 20 overs an hour rather than 13 or 14), I can easily see Tendulkar scoring an undefeated 309, even 409, on the first day of the fourth Test match of 1930, as the Don did. This is often quoted as the day on which Bradman took batting in Test cricket to a previously unattained level of sustained brilliance. On getting back to the Queen’s Hotel in Leeds, where the Australians were staying, he went straight to the desk and asked for “a nice pot of tea” to be sent to his room, while the rest of the side went expectantly to the bar — a case, perhaps, of genius doing what it must. As with Tendulkar, I expect privacy was already becoming an ever more precious commodity for Bradman, even at the age of 21. Let us just say that Tendulkar is the Bradman of today — less hypnotic but scarcely less phenomenal — and leave it at that.

[Precambrian]

Yes he indeed is today's Bradman, and Bradman was yesteryears Tendulkar..