Overrated cricketers

[puddleduck]

Yep, as I said further up the page. You can't compare eras because the game is continually evolving. However, you can locate a player within his own time, and Bradman was better than any of his contempories but such a margin as to put him out in front by himself. After that, it's pretty much just personal preference from the 2/3 great batsmen of each generation.

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

if you say tendulkar is better than bradman because he has a technique more refined by playing in different conditions and that bridges the 40+ difference in their average then we can all have a blast claiming silly things like

andrew strauss is better than jack hobbs
stephen fleming is better than george headley

I mean, they were good players, but they were very clearly behind bradman, so it makes sense to compare players similarly behind tendulkar to them.

you have to be careful with bradman, his average is so good it's pretty easy to descend anything into farce and you can find yourself not really giving it it's due just to make sense of the world.

 

[Bevab]

Oh no, here is Macintosh.

Bradman overrated? Several of his statistical records are still high held records today. That indicates his skill. There are a lot more records that Bradman has done, will search em later and post it.

 

[Papa_Smurf]

 

[Anjula]

Posted via Mobile Device

Sri Lanka it has to be Dilshan way too much dependency

Soo True,
Sure he hitted some big runs in the World Cup,
But he can't bat on any alive pitches.
Also he can't defend or play an Straight Drive.
Remember How much he suffered in England.

 

[macintosh]

if you say tendulkar is better than bradman because he has a technique more refined by playing in different conditions and that bridges the 40+ difference in their average then we can all have a blast claiming silly things like

andrew strauss is better than jack hobbs
stephen fleming is better than george headley

I mean, they were good players, but they were very clearly behind bradman, so it makes sense to compare players similarly behind tendulkar to them.

you have to be careful with bradman, his average is so good it's pretty easy to descend anything into farce and you can find yourself not really giving it it's due just to make sense of the world.

M not trying to prove that Tendulkar is the best batsman ever,
my arguement is that we cannot compare players from different eras.

I agree having an average of 99.94 even against a club side would be a huge achievement, Bradman has done it in international cricket, thats a huge thing

But we cannot judge what the modern batsmen like Sachin, Lara or Ponting would have been like if they would have played without the protective gears in Bradman's era nor can we judge what Bradman would have been like in the current era against the high quality bowlers.
Bradman was the greatest batsman of his time, but you cannot find a way of comparing him with the batsmen of other eras.

In the current era, the quality of bowling and fielding is way superior to what it was before, the amount of strong teams in the current era are 8 compared to 2 in Bradman's time, number of matches played are also much higher than before(along with the ODIs)which requires a very high level of fitness, fielding has improved a lot(which makes run scoring more difficult and also creates more chances of runouts), players have to adapt to different formats and also different types of conditions in different countries,etc. which makes it impossible to have an average of 99.94 in the current era.

 

[Papa_Smurf]

What makes you think it was possible in his era? Wally Hammond, George Headley, Len Hutton all played in the same era as Bradman, are are bonified legends of the game. Yet, they still averaged in the 50-60 range. One look at the histogram should prove how un-human the Don was. For comparison sakes, the difference between the Don's average and Sachin's is greater than that of Sachin and McGrath.

 

[aussie1st]

You will also find Bradman achieved an average of 95.14 in First Class cricket spanning 234 matches. Once again no one even comes close to these figures. The next closest was Merchant with an average of 71.

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/australia/content/records/284199.html

 

[Bevab]

He was knighted. That's an achievement.

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High quality bowlers now?

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And he was also the only batsman to have scored 2 triple centuries, a record which held for about 70 years, after which Sehwag came on equal with him.

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He has the highest conversion rates 50-plus scores into hundreds, the highest runs per innings in hundreds, and a few more that you all can post.

Here is the link.

 

[macintosh]

What makes you think it was possible in his era? Wally Hammond, George Headley, Len Hutton all played in the same era as Bradman, are are bonified legends of the game. Yet, they still averaged in the 50-60 range. One look at the histogram should prove how un-human the Don was. For comparison sakes, the difference between the Don's average and Sachin's is greater than that of Sachin and McGrath.

Is there any way you can prove that Bradman could have averaged 99.94 in the current era against the level of bowling and the invention of reverse swing, mystery spinners, doosra, etc.?

Would he have averaged 99.94 if he faced bowlers like against Ambrose-Walsh-Bishop, Wasim-Waqar-Akhtar-Saqlain, McGrath-Lee-Gilespie-Warne, Donald-Pollock,Steyn-Morkel,Murali- Vaas and many more?

Would he have been fit enough for the workload of modern cricket?

We cannot find a proper answer for such questions, because its impossible to know how a player would have performed in another era.

 

[Papa_Smurf]

Is there any way you can prove that Bradman could have averaged 99.94 in the current era against the level of bowling and the invention of reverse swing, mystery spinners, doosra, etc.?

Would he have averaged 99.94 if he faced bowlers like against Ambrose-Walsh-Bishop, Wasim-Waqar-Akhtar-Saqlain, McGrath-Lee-Gilespie-Warne, Donald-Pollock,Steyn-Morkel,Murali- Vaas and many more?

Would he have been fit enough for the workload of modern cricket?

We cannot find a proper answer for such questions, because its impossible to know how a player would have performed in another era.

Well I can't prove anything. But yeah, I'd back him to average the same. If not more. You're right that bowling has advanced a lot more since his time period, and the variety now would not have existed back then. But, batting's been made easier as well. There's helmets, flatter pitches, shorter boundaries etc.

Plus, even the bowling standards of the '70-'90's does not hold a stick to the tactic of bodyline. You either got hit, or got out. And yet, Bradman still managed to average more than 50.

Obviously, again, I can't prove his fitness. But with someone with superhuman determination and concentration, I would back him to rise to the fitness demands of today. And you're still missing the fundamental point. The one thing that has been consistent across ALL generations of Test cricket is that all the great batsmen have averaged in the range of 40-60. Apart from Sir Don - who averages twice as much as any other GREAT of the game.

His superhuman ability to concentrate for long periods of time was his greatest attribute. And that's what sets him apart.

 

[puddleduck]

He was no Mark Ramprakash though.

 

[Dr. Pepper]

Is there any way you can prove that Bradman could have averaged 99.94 in the current era against the level of bowling and the invention of reverse swing, mystery spinners, doosra, etc.?

Would he have averaged 99.94 if he faced bowlers like against Ambrose-Walsh-Bishop, Wasim-Waqar-Akhtar-Saqlain, McGrath-Lee-Gilespie-Warne, Donald-Pollock,Steyn-Morkel,Murali- Vaas and many more?

Would he have been fit enough for the workload of modern cricket?

We cannot find a proper answer for such questions, because its impossible to know how a player would have performed in another era.

The point isn't that he'd average so ridiculously highly in every era, the point is that his average completely blew everyone else's from his era out of the water. He well and truly dominated an era in a way nobody has done after him.

 

[macintosh]

The point isn't that he'd average so ridiculously highly in every era, the point is that his average completely blew everyone else's from his era out of the water. He well and truly dominated an era in a way nobody has done after him.

I agree with this, he dominated his era like no other player has ever done.

 

[macintosh]

Well I can't prove anything. But yeah, I'd back him to average
the same. If not more. You're right that bowling has advanced a lot more since his time
period, and the variety now would not have existed back then. But, batting's been made
easier as well. There's helmets, flatter pitches, shorter boundaries etc.
Plus, even the bowling standards of the '70-'90's does not hold a stick to the tactic of
bodyline. You either got hit, or got out. And yet, Bradman still managed to average more
than 50.

Obviously, again, I can't prove his fitness. But with someone with superhuman
determination and concentration, I would back him to rise to the fitness demands of today.
And you're still missing the fundamental point. The one thing that has been consistent
across ALL generations of Test cricket is that all the great batsmen have averaged in the
range of 40-60. Apart from Sir Don - who averages twice as much as any other GREAT of the
game.
His superhuman ability to concentrate for long periods of time was his greatest attribute.
And that's what sets him apart.

I guess Bradman faced bodyline in just 1 series, people like Gavaskar faced the brutal WI bodyline bowling with ease in so many matches. And I think helmets just makes it easier to face fast bowling(mostly bouncers), but playing reverse swing, and quality spinners like Murali, Warne, Vettori, Saqlain, etc. need a lot of skill, helmets have nothing to do with it.
And secondly there are many strategies used to avoid batsman from scoring or trying to target a batsman's weakness, the batsmen have to concentrate a lot and overcome all these things, these things didn't happen before apart from the Bodyline series, there was no science of fielding in Bradman's time.

And you cannot say that pitches are flatter in current era, the pitches were most suitable to batsmen when Bradman played, there were mostly batting pitches, only difficulty was sticky wickets.
Before 1920, the wickets were bowler friendly,
between 1920 to 1960 the pitches were batsmen friendly,
Since 1970s, there has been a balance.
And this is the reason why most of the batsmen with the highest averages belong to the period from 1920 to 1960.

http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/records/282910.html

I know that Bradman has achieved an average of 99.94 which is much higher than the averages of all batsmen across all eras which has ranged from 40 to 60, but he played against 1 good team and 3 minnows,thats where the main difference is created, the number of good teams Bradman faced were 1(in 2 countries) and current batsmen face atleast 7 good teams in different conditions and different kinds of grounds which makes adaptability a very huge factor, not to forget adapting to the shorter formats aswell along with the busy schedule which demands high level of fitness.

Bradman might have had superhuman determination and concentration, but players like Dravid, Kallis, etc. have had the same qualities, yet they are not able to achieve an average which is above 60 or 70 because of the quality of bowling and fielding they have to face.

Its true that Bradman has dominated his era like no other, but the problem I have is that other great batsmen, from the other eras have achieved perfection, have faced the difficulties which didn't even exist in Bradman's time, yet they are rated half as good as Bradman, that's not fair at all, Bradman was the best of his era, but comparing him with someone else who played in a completely different era where the game has changed a lot is not right.