Sachin and Bradman comparison : Oz & Indian press

[Vijay.Sharma]

Tiger80, to answer your question further below is the list of the total number of innings played during the career span of each of the following batsmen (the 20 ATGs I have in my list). The numbers are only till the end of previous season so the currently playing ATGs' numbers are not exact but you will get the drift of the competition Name - Career Span - Innings by batsmen number 1 to 6 Hobbs - 01 Jan 1908 to 16 Aug 1930 - 2093 Hammond - 24 Dec 1927 to 21 Mar 1947 - 2377 Bradman - 30 Nov 1928 to 14 Aug 1948 - 2612 Hutton - 26 Jun 1937 to 25 Mar 1955 - 2961 Sobers - 30 Mar 1954 to 30 Mar 1974 - 7452 Barrington - 09 Jun 1955 to 25 Jul 1968 - 4918 Chappell - 11 Dec 1970 to 02 Jan 1984 - 6257 Gavaskar - 06 Mar 1971 to 13 Mar 1987 - 8066 Richards - 22 Nov 1974 to 08 Aug 1991 - 8827 Miandad - 09 Oct 1976 to 16 Dec 1993 - 9371 Border - 29 Dec 1978 to 25 Mar 1994 - 8495 Waugh - 26 Dec 1985 to 02 Jan 2004 - 13349 Sachin - 15 Nov 1989 to 31 Mar 2010 - 17976 Lara - 06 Dec 1990 to 27 Nov 2006 - 13755 Inzamam - 04 Jun 1992 to 08 Oct 2007 - 13674 Pawning - 08 Dec 1995 to 31 Mar 2010 - 14086 Kallis - 14 Dec 1995 to 31 Mar 2010 - 14067 Dravid - 20 Jun 1996 to 31 Mar 2010 - 13854 Sangakkara - 20 Jul 2000 to 31 Mar 2010 - 7207 Sehwag - 03 Nov 2011 to 31 Mar 2010 - 8935. The number of innings played has increased by almost 7 times between Hobbs and Sachin. Firstly this means that there are more number of Tests played. Secondly given the data from the previous post we can conclude that since more number of players also played the game the competition itself increased quite a lot

[mishra]

Isnt decline in cricket on that island of legends is due to fact that the boyz started playing basket ball and baseball?

[surajmal]

So you think the absolute quality of Sammy is equal to Holding? It's just the relative competitiveness of cricket which makes us think Holding is greater?

best talent of west indies has moved into other athletic activities. did you miss that line?

[Utalk]

Leaving Inzi out from what I have seen in footage of Bradman I couldn't see many similarities between him and Tendulkar. Tendulkar is a freak the way he plays according to coaching manual. Tendulkar is a dream for any coach. I might be wrong but from the available footage Bradman looks a bottom handed player who was good square of the wicket. In my 25 years of watching cricket I have not a player anywhere close to Tendulkar the way he plays. Best thing about Tendulkar is his mastery of all the shots. Be it cover drive on the up, upper cut, late cut of spinners, straight drive, on drive,dancing down to spinners, flick through square leg, sweep shot Tendulkar plays them all equally good. The only shot I can't recall him playing with perfection is pull/hook shot. He must be good at it otherwise he would have been found out after playing for so long.

[Number]

Leaving Inzi out from what I have seen in footage of Bradman I couldn't see many similarities between him and Tendulkar. Tendulkar is a freak the way he plays according to coaching manual. Tendulkar is a dream for any coach. I might be wrong but from the available footage Bradman looks a bottom handed player who was good square of the wicket. In my 25 years of watching cricket I have not a player anywhere close to Tendulkar the way he plays. Best thing about Tendulkar is his mastery of all the shots. Be it cover drive on the up, upper cut, late cut of spinners, straight drive, on drive,dancing down to spinners, flick through square leg, sweep shot Tendulkar plays them all equally good. The only shot I can't recall him playing with perfection is pull/hook shot. He must be good at it otherwise he would have been found out after playing for so long.

:nice:

[Lord]

Leaving Inzi out from what I have seen in footage of Bradman I couldn't see many similarities between him and Tendulkar. Tendulkar is a freak the way he plays according to coaching manual. Tendulkar is a dream for any coach. I might be wrong but from the available footage Bradman looks a bottom handed player who was good square of the wicket. In my 25 years of watching cricket I have not a player anywhere close to Tendulkar the way he plays. Best thing about Tendulkar is his mastery of all the shots. Be it cover drive on the up, upper cut, late cut of spinners, straight drive, on drive,dancing down to spinners, flick through square leg, sweep shot Tendulkar plays them all equally good. The only shot I can't recall him playing with perfection is pull/hook shot. He must be good at it otherwise he would have been found out after playing for so long.

5A3PSnEUJWw

[The Outsider]

best talent of west indies has moved into other athletic activities. did you miss that line?

But the best "tailunt" of India is still following cricket like crazy and any genetic differences can surely be made up by outliers in a sample size of one billion. So, why aren't we kicking everyone's butt in world cricket?

[jairamesh]

Good publicity stunt from aussies, just before aus v India series. Talk about cheap marketing...

[surajmal]

But the best "tailunt" of India is still following cricket like crazy and any genetic differences can surely be made up by outliers in a sample size of one billion. So' date=' why aren't we kicking everyone's butt in world cricket?[/quote'] There are plenty of inefficient nodes and unprofessional entities in India that from the ground level to the highest level a top talent can easily get wasted. I bet a professional baseball team in US spends more on injury management than BCCI. BCCI is only good at bean counting; everything else that matters, they're perfectly third world at doing. But I don't know. Ask the players, why they suck or are not as good as they should be.

[The Outsider]

There are plenty of inefficient nodes and unprofessional entities in India that from the ground level to the highest level a top talent can easily get wasted. I bet a professional baseball team in US spends more on injury management than BCCI. BCCI is only good at bean counting; everything else that matters, they're perfectly third world at doing. But I don't know. Ask the players, why they suck or are not as good as they should be.

You are surely not saying that the present day Indian cricket structure is any worse than the West Indian or Jamaican cricket structure in the 70s and 80s. Let me know if you are, and I won't waste any more time.

[surajmal]

You are surely not saying that the present day Indian cricket structure is any worse than the West Indian or Jamaican cricket structure in the 70s and 80s. Let me know if you are' date=' and I won't waste any more time.[/quote'] Cricket didn't have the professional framework in 70s that it has today, where every extra inch makes a difference. I won't be surprised if the English and Australian setup are running some form of "moneyball" type system. I don't know much of west Indian system from the 70s but should we be surprised if it is found it that BCCI's structure really is worse than that of 70s era WI? Considering the level of governance in other sectors, I think it would be out of character, if BCCI is managed well (even in comparison to 70s - 80s WI Cricket).

[The Outsider]

Cricket didn't have the professional framework in 70s that it has today' date= where every extra inch makes a difference. I won't be surprised if the English and Australian setup are running some form of "moneyball" type system. I don't know much of west Indian system from the 70s but should we be surprised if it is found it that BCCI's structure really is worse than that of 70s era WI? Considering the level of governance in other sectors, I think it would be out of character, if BCCI is managed well (even in comparison to 70s - 80s WI Cricket).

So, all cricketers of the 70s and 80s are crap? Including Tendulkar who debuted in the 80s and learned his skills in the mid to late 80s in an unprofessional framework? If you would read a bit, you will be hard pressed to find a more unprofessional cricketing structure than West Indies. Throughout history, they have been embattled by the country and team problem briefly arrested by Worrell and Lloyd. Don't take my word, ask around on ICF or other places about the level of professionalism the West Indies structure had even at their peak. It was just that they had 8-9 near certain players to select and a huge back up, that it was never highlighted at their peak.

[Tiger80]

Are you kidding me? For the first 50 years of Test cricket there were just 3 countries playing it with one being a minnow (SA). The whole population pool involved would have been hardly a few millions. When India came in to the scene for the first 30-40 years (until about the 80s) serious cricket was played basically in urban centers only. Indian teams would virtually be Mumbai teams with a few players thrown in from K'taka and Delhi. It's only in the 90s and more recently that competitive cricket has been played all over India and the national team looks at least like a proper representation of the nation. If you think Zim and Ban are minnows then what about teams like SA, India, WI, Pak, and NZ till about 1950s. Among these only WI graduated to a serious team in the 1960s and SA in the late 60s.

I am not comparing present day cricket to cricket played in 30s.I think the golden era of test cricket was 70s and 80s. also the argument that cricket was played in urban india so selection was restricted to few millions is not good,if this is true then how Pakistan became very good team in 80s and they found Akram and Waqar in 80s as they had very limited numbers to select

[Vijay.Sharma]

I am not comparing present day cricket to cricket played in 30s.I think the golden era of test cricket was 70s and 80s. also the argument that cricket was played in urban india so selection was restricted to few millions is not good,if this is true then how Pakistan became very good team in 80s and they found Akram and Waqar in 80s as they had very limited numbers to select

Maybe because our cricket culture concentrated more on batsmen and spinners? Again it is not the population of people in the country we are talking about. It is the population of people playing the game at a competitive level. And that is just one factor. See Bangladesh has a huge population and are definitely more populated than SL and possibly they may have even more first class cricketers than SL but they are half as good. What SL has is a matured cricket culture and structure that produces good talent an pits them against the others such that the others also improve by playing against these fellows. Consider India's case...till about the late 90s just Mumbai won the Ranji Trophy. And in the few occasions that they didn't either Karnataka or Delhi would win it. Of course the other states had teams too but the talent pool was not great and they did not have great structures to groom cricketers. Moreover cricket being a costly sport only the richer people in those states would play it. But in the last decade lotsa poorer people are getting funds somehow or the other to take up the sport and even parents are encouraging them unlike before to chase their dreams. So we have players coming from small towns. See a brilliant kid may stand out in a class of 20 students and he may score like 85% whereas the rest score like 70-75%. Now suppose admissions were based on relative ranking...say top 5 percentile go thru. When the kid goes to a marquee college because he is in the top 5 percentile from his school. Let's say he continues to score 85% but now that he is with many others who score between 80-90% he might no longer be in the top 5 percentile. An example of a professional credential that I got in 2004 with American Society of Quality, ASQ was that they would have similar percentile based certifications. So there was no cut-off or passing mark as such. It was a relative score and if you were among the top 10 (or 20...not sure they didnt disclose) percentile then you would get thru. Till about the mid 90s only about 2000 people all over the world took the exam. By the time I tool the exam it went upto 30-40k. And these days its almost a lakh. So it is even more difficult to get thru these days. It's all relative to the competition - quantity of competition and quality of competition. Any popular skill that survives necessarily has more high quality practitioners as time goes by. There are more high quality pilots today than there were in 1940s. Someone who was exceptional in 1940 would have stood out more obviously than today because there are quite a few exceptional pilots today. Similarly there are more high quality commandos today than there were in say 1960s. The distance between the best and rest would have reduced because the general standards have improved. The same phenomenon exists in all human skills if that skill is a beneficial one to have (walking long distances is not a greatly necessary skill to possess today thats why we haven't improved over our ancestors but olympic walking is beneficial thats why new records are broken)

[Asim]

I can find at least one similarity, after very last match for both of them; Bradman career avg was deoped from 100+ to 99.xx and Inzi career avg dropped from 50 to 49.xx

[Blue-no1]

The author is correct. Inzi bats more like Bradman in terms of style. The posture, pull shots etc remind me of Badman. The author does not say Inzy scores like Bradman, but the styles are similar. To those desis in denial--- Tendu is the best that the world has ever produced. The balance in his stance while meeting the ball is Mona Lisa and Taj mahal put together. After Alan Donald's comments in the 90's, every time I watch, I watch the balance in each of his shots including defensive pushes. His balance backed by extraordinary preparation that results in scoring at a strike rate of 5.2 per over (260 runs in 50 overs which is big for 90's) when the rest of the world including Indians were scoring at 4.2 per over, makes him the best that the world has ever seen.

[zep1706]

If anyone's interested here is the link to the original paper, I haven't read it yet, will do when i am free-- http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1759-3441.2011.00138.x/full You can only download it if you have subscription, if anyone needs the pdf just pm me :) ------------------------ The list given in the paper has Don at #1 with 4067.10 points and Tendulkar at #2 with 4038.94 points. This is as of 31st December 2010. The gap between the 2nd and 3rd (Kallis) is quite large with Kaliis having 3116.88 points.

[Raghav_12]

OK just to give you an indication, here are the number of players who played the game at Test level - from 1877 to 31 Dec 1918 (end of WW1) - 372 players i.e. about 56 players per decade 01 jan 1919 to 31 dec 1945 (between the wars) - 388 players i.e. about 130 players per decade 01 jan 1946 to 31 dec 1959 - 435 players i.e. about 290 players per decade 01 jan 1960 to 31 dec 1969 - 346 players 01 jan 1970 to 31 dec 1979 - 321 players 01 jan 1980 to 31 dec 1989 - 382 players 01 jan 1990 to 31 dec 1999 - 500 players 01 jan 2000 to 31 dec 2009 - 586 players 01 jan 2010 to present - 242 players

Tiger80, to answer your question further below is the list of the total number of innings played during the career span of each of the following batsmen (the 20 ATGs I have in my list). The numbers are only till the end of previous season so the currently playing ATGs' numbers are not exact but you will get the drift of the competition Name - Career Span - Innings by batsmen number 1 to 6 Hobbs - 01 Jan 1908 to 16 Aug 1930 - 2093 Hammond - 24 Dec 1927 to 21 Mar 1947 - 2377 Bradman - 30 Nov 1928 to 14 Aug 1948 - 2612 Hutton - 26 Jun 1937 to 25 Mar 1955 - 2961 Sobers - 30 Mar 1954 to 30 Mar 1974 - 7452 Barrington - 09 Jun 1955 to 25 Jul 1968 - 4918 Chappell - 11 Dec 1970 to 02 Jan 1984 - 6257 Gavaskar - 06 Mar 1971 to 13 Mar 1987 - 8066 Richards - 22 Nov 1974 to 08 Aug 1991 - 8827 Miandad - 09 Oct 1976 to 16 Dec 1993 - 9371 Border - 29 Dec 1978 to 25 Mar 1994 - 8495 Waugh - 26 Dec 1985 to 02 Jan 2004 - 13349 Sachin - 15 Nov 1989 to 31 Mar 2010 - 17976 Lara - 06 Dec 1990 to 27 Nov 2006 - 13755 Inzamam - 04 Jun 1992 to 08 Oct 2007 - 13674 Pawning - 08 Dec 1995 to 31 Mar 2010 - 14086 Kallis - 14 Dec 1995 to 31 Mar 2010 - 14067 Dravid - 20 Jun 1996 to 31 Mar 2010 - 13854 Sangakkara - 20 Jul 2000 to 31 Mar 2010 - 7207 Sehwag - 03 Nov 2011 to 31 Mar 2010 - 8935. The number of innings played has increased by almost 7 times between Hobbs and Sachin. Firstly this means that there are more number of Tests played. Secondly given the data from the previous post we can conclude that since more number of players also played the game the competition itself increased quite a lot

Sharma Ji, that's some great analysis. Would like to know which database you used to come up with these. Also these number would help outsider in some analysis Outy was carrying on. Now he may recalculate things as we have real numbers in hand. http://www.indiancricketfans.com/showpost.php?p=1733657&postcount=53

Here is a back of the envelope calculation that can be done to identify what would constitute an outlier in different sample sizes. Let's take the DFFITS method of identifying statistical outliers for it's simplistic scaling. It scales as 1/sqrt(n). Say, in Bradman's time there were 20 international class batsmen(5 teams, but allowing for the argument that 3 were "minnows" so choosing just 3 batsmen each from them - the likes of Headley and Hazare played for the "minnows" - and today there are 50(being generous here and counting the likes of Dhoni ). The 1/sqrt(n) scaling can give a simple estimate of 0.65 as the ratio then and now of a statistical outlier. Applying that to Bradman's average of 100 it would be an average of 65 today. This is when I've weighed the calculation heavily in today's favor. More realistically, there are only 30-40 international class batmen today if one looks at the batting line ups of Pakistan, West Indies, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh, and New Zealand with a bit more scrutiny. Taking the number to be 40, the ratio goes to 0.71 or implying an average of 71 for someone to be a statistical outlier like Bradman. For 30, it is around 81. Pick whichever one you like.

[Guest BossBhai]

-- Removed on request of the user --

[8ankitj]

Can we see some sample of your statistical prowess used on cricket ?

Not that it is necessary, but refer to posts I made only yesterday on another forum - http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/2733978-post220.html http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/2733990-post226.html http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/2734009-post231.html And another little piece of non-technical work I did an year ago - http://www.cricketweb.net/forum/cricket-chat/48524-how-valuable-wicket.html