On average, Donald Bradman is a genius. 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 the 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. Comparisons are a part of human nature. 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 close to nothing need to be completely 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?
Bradman and Sehwag
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 (some of them compiled during English summers and used by Duncan Hamilton in Larwood’s biography) 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. Against England Bradman averaged 89.78 and Sehwag against Pakistan averages 91.14. When a destructive and unconventional player has the measure of an attack he can hammer it all day.
Sehwag is exposed in the modern era with different conditions and a variety of attacks while Bradman just played against one decent side. Imagine a player like Sehwag playing mostly one opposition in just nine grounds once every two years and that too after six practice games in timeless matches and you can literally 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 crudely?
Reading History
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 chaffed 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 dressing room conflicts of Bradman during the Bodyline Series and sensing an independent streak in him 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 died after 30 years in a mental institute 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.
The 1930 Tour
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.
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.
(This article and its second part first appeared as an essay in IV parts on The Times of India website on May 21, 2011.)
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