Lol, what? Bodyline only occurred in one series, and has been banned since then. It was a field-setting which relied the bowler on bowling fast, short pitched deliveries in the line of leg-stump, each delivery. The batsman would then either take the hit of the ball, or attempt to play a shot and get out caught to the number of fielders behind square-leg. Hence get out or hit out.
There's a fantastic film on it - The Bloody Ashes.
I know the field setup used in the Bodyline series was banned, thats the reason why I have said 'bodyline bowling' in my post, I don't think it was easy facing bouncer barrages in the 70s and 80s against the high quality bowlers of that time with a leg side field(though the field setup was not as bad as bodyline, but the fast bowling of that time was too good).
And not to take anything away from Gavaskar, he was a great player. But there's always been a misconception that he was brilliant against the great WI quicks. His average against them was inflated by his amazing series against them in '71 - before any of the quicks debuted. When he faced the full quartet of Marshall, Garner,
Holding and Roberts - he averaged only 30.
Batting records | Test
matches | Cricinfo Statsguru | ESPN Cricinfo
This is wrong, yes his average is inflated because of his first series against them, but you are just pointing out at 1 bad series he had against them, in the next series against WI, he averaged 50.50.
Out of his 27 tests against WI,
He has played 15 tests involving Holding,
14 tests involving Marshall,
and 11 involving Roberts. He hasn't faced much of Garner(only 4 tests), and in some matches he has faced 2 or 3 of those 4 great fast bowlers, but even when one or two of them weren't playing, there were bowlers like Winston Davis and Wayne Daniel who were also equally quick and were very difficult to play.
Bradman in his FC career faced 2 of the greatest legspinners in histroy - O'Rielly and Grimmett. And still averaged over 90. So there goes your argument against spin. And for the record - Vettori and Saqlain are/were good spinners, not quality great ones.
Saqlain Mushtaq Was the fastest to reach the milestones of 100, 150, 200 and 250 wickets in ODIs, he invented the doosra, what you mean he wasn't a great bowler? He wasn't handled well by the Pakistan management, but you cannot question his ability with the ball, I can agree with you on Vettori,but I was just giving you examples, there are many more spinners faced by the current batsmen who are very skilled, like Mendis, Ajmal, Swann,etc.
O'Rielly and Grimmett really don't stand anywhere compared to the modern spinners, and it was just 2 spinners, currently, almost all teams have very good spinners, even Bangladesh who are considered minnows have no shortage of good spin bowlers.
Is there a science now? Have there been new fielding positions invented over the last 20 years that I'm not aware of. Ridiculous argument.
There wouldn't be a lot of changes in the field whether the batsmen is set or is just new to the crease(except for the bodyline series),
In the later eras, by making the use of the technology,there were specific field plans set to stop the batsmen from scoring runs, and it became easier to identify the weaknesses of the batsman and target it.
Sir Ian Botham himself said that there was no science of fielding in Bradman's time.
1920 - 1960 is not a time period. You can fill about 3 different generations of cricketers in that period. Yeah, a lot of the batsmen who average late 50's-early 60's are from that time period, but you can't group those 40 years as one generation of cricketers. And, Kallis and Trott are also right up in that list. AND even if we do consider this argument - explain how the difference between those names is only
about 2-4 runs (56-60 avg), apart from Bradman, whose difference is almost more than 40 (99.94!)?
My main arguement here is that pitches of that time were dead wickets, there were batting friendly, I think the most number of batsmen in the list of highest averages are from 1920 -1960 and few are from the other eras. That pretty much proves my point about it.
Dravid and Kallis can concentrate for long periods of time, and that is great quality in a batsman. But it's not superhuman. The reason Bradman was hard to dismiss was that he watched each and every ball he faced like an eagle. Each and every one!
This is a wrong word used here, you cannot say Bradman had a 'superhuman' quality of concentration, saying that Bradman watched each and every ball like an eagle doesn't make much sense, how many videos have you seen of Bradman's batting? how can you say that his level of concentration was higher than Dravid or Kallis??
The game has changed a lot. You're right. But it still does not explain the astronomical difference between him and every other great to have played the game.
You cannot compare between him and other greats,
if a player has an average of 99.94 against 1 good team and 3 minnows in 2 countries,
then you cannot compare him with someone else who plays against 8 good teams and 2 minnows with very high bowling and fielding standards and much more workload.
And to explain that there isn't a huge difference between him and others let me show you a few stats,
Bradman played against 4 teams(3 minnows out of that 4).
Lets take a look at some other players who have a very good record against 4 teams(2 good team and 2 minnows in a much more professional era),
Ian Bell averages 91.09 against Pak, SL, Ban, Zim.
Sangakarra averages 74.86 against Pak, NZ, Ban, Zim.
Mohd. Yousuf averages 81.53 against Eng, WI, Ban and Zim.
Kallis averages 79.75 against India, WI, Zim and Ban.
There are many such examples where a player has done well against 3 or 4 teams like Bradman.
I still rate Bradman very highly and agree with the fact that Bradman dominated his era and was much better compared to other batsmen of his time, but comparing him with batsmen of other eras is just not right, we cannot come to a proper conclusion by making such comparisons,
when we compare players from different eras, we just have to make assumptions that X player would have been equally good in Y's era and so on, but we hardly consider the fact that the game keeps evolving and keeps changing. There is no method to determine how a particular player would have been in another era. You can just rate the great players of each era, thats it, you can't come to a realistic conclusion in making cross era comparisons.
